Has Trump Finally Gone Too Far?

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Steve3007
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Re: Has Trump Finally Gone Too Far?

Post by Steve3007 »

As I write, the Nasdaq is opening another 2% down. It appears to be rapidly losing the gains that Trump so proudly boasted were down to him personally. Attempts to stifle press freedom and stop asylum claims have been overturned by judges and Ivanka Trump has handed the Democrat candidate for the 2020 election a chant for his or her election rallies: Lock her up!

Perhaps the Trump brand has indeed gone as far as it can go.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Has Trump Finally Gone Too Far?

Post by Sy Borg »

Such an optimist :)
Steve3007
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Re: Has Trump Finally Gone Too Far?

Post by Steve3007 »

The recent furore over Trump's remarks about the four Democrat congresswomen, in which he told them to "go home" is interesting.

It would seem that a simple but possibly effective technique for reducing the chances of the Democrats in next year's presidential election is to pick four people who are regarded as being on the left of the party ("the squad") and say something outrageous about them. It doesn't really matter what it is, so long as it is sufficiently beyond the pale to get plenty of news coverage and cannot be allowed to go unanswered. So long as the Republican party is sufficiently disciplined to largely agree not to condemn the outrageous comment, this means that mainstream Democrats feel forced to do so, and to come to the defence of "the squad". Trump and the Republicans can then point to this defence and construct a narrative that "the squad" are part of the mainstream of the Democrats, that they're all a bunch of commies etc.

The mainstream Democrats have the unenviable choice of either staying silent and thereby allowing more and more outrageous talk to go unchallenged or speaking out and allowing the people on the left wing of the party to be depicted as being in the middle of the party.

Is there any other way of dealing with this? Can we look forward to this technique being used in more and more extreme ways in the future? Could the Democrats be effective in pulling the same trick the opposite way around?
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Felix
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Re: Has Trump Finally Gone Too Far?

Post by Felix »

Steve3007 said: It would seem that a simple but possibly effective technique for reducing the chances of the Democrats in next year's presidential election is to pick four people who are regarded as being on the left of the party ("the squad") and say something outrageous about them.
He says something outrageous everyday but these tweets exceeded his usual crass insults and were just daft. He said that the 4 congresswomen, all racial minorities, "hated America," and should "go back to their own country," when three of the 4 women were born in the U.S. The people who voted them into office were presumably well aware of their political views when they elected them.

Four republican members and one independent member of congress did agree to condemn Trump's speech, but his rhetoric is getting more and more extreme and it's kind of scary that most republicans will seemingly go along with anything he says or does. His political base seems to stick with him no matter what, but they are a minority so their support alone won't get him reelected, and his crude tactics are turning just about everyone else against him.

But I agree that the Democrats can ruin their opportunity to beat Trump in the next election by embracing too many extreme leftist policies, it plays right in to his ploy to paint them all as commie-free-lunch-open-border radicals. That and the fact that the Republicans have more or less pledged allegiance to gerrymandering the vote and welcoming election meddling by pro-Trump foreign agents.
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
Steve3007
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Re: Has Trump Finally Gone Too Far?

Post by Steve3007 »

Well, the latest development in this story appears to be that the crowds at Trump rallies have now replaced the chant "Lock Her Up!" with the chant "Send Her Back!". The irony of the fact that Trump's entire election campaign was based on asserting the terrible state of the country until the moment he took office, and that they should therefore logically have been calling for him to be sent back to Scotland/Germany where he "originated" from, is of course lost.

It seems to me that the best policy for Democrats at this point is not to loudly and predictably condemn those chants but to quietly and subtly encourage them. As noted before, Trump's technique is to depict the left of the Democratic Party as being embraced by the mainstream and howl that they're all a bunch of communists. If the Democrats can do something analogous to this by creating a narrative in which Trump surrounds himself with baying mobs who scream for American citizens to be thrown out of the country because they don't look sufficiently American, that might work well for them. Give them enough rope to hang themselves.

Obviously, none of this, on either side, has anything remotely to do with truth or policy. It's about winning elections.
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Felix
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Re: Has Trump Finally Gone Too Far?

Post by Felix »

Obviously, none of this, on either side, has anything remotely to do with truth or policy. It's about winning elections.
Yes, that is what's so depressing, it's now the chief aim of politics.

Trump's wife was born in Eastern Europe, I wonder if he put that in their pre-nuptial agreement? - "Do whatever I say or I'll send you back there." :)
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
Steve3007
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Re: Has Trump Finally Gone Too Far?

Post by Steve3007 »

Yes, I have idly wondered today whether next time Melania Trump appears on a stage, the Trump supporters will chant "Send her back!" just for fun. If they did, I wonder if Mr and Mrs Trump would see the funny side. After all, according to one of the attendees at Trump's recent rally, the problem with "these people" (presumably meaning the radical left communists in the Democrat Party) is that they have no sense of humour.
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