I don’t really have much to say about the various stories about President Trump’s outrageous comments and actions that are leading the news today. They’re not really surprising to me.
I agree with some of the things that Donald Trump has done as president; I disagree with others. I don’t plan on voting for him for president because I don’t think he has earned a second term. I didn’t think that Barack Obama had earned a second term, either, so I didn’t vote for him in 2012. Presidents running for re-election are sort of like movie sequels. Would the president have been elected the first time around based on the accomplishments of his first term?
In his selection of vice president Joe Biden has called my voting for him into question. I will not vote for Kamala Harris for president. I could vote for Joe Biden if a) he’d take, pass, and publish the results of a cognitive assessment and b) I were convinced he’d serve all four years of his term.
So is it Jorgensen then?
My 2016 vote for Gary Johnson was, I think, probably the most defensible vote I ever made for President. He was, after all, the only candidate that hadn’t been the subject of a federal criminal probe where wrongdoing was found.
But right now, unless something changes, I will vote for Biden despite his many flaws. I would, however, like to see both him AND Trump take a cognitive test. I doubt either one would do very well.
I think that Trump is cognitively okay; I just think he’s a jerk.
Jo Jorgensen is a terrible candidate for president. She’s even less qualified than Trump was in 2016 if such a thing be possible.
Well. Here’s the candidate. Non-planted question and all……… This is sad.
https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1303075086166097923?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1303471776454893568%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Face.mu.nu%2F
BTW. Yes, Trump is a jerk. Name me the presidents from Kennedy on who were not jerks.
Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush
Note that although I think that Jimmy Carter was a poor president a jerk he was not.
My criticisms of Trump go beyond his being a jerk. He’s a lousy manager; he’s a lousy politician. He’s not temperamentally suited to be the president during a national crisis. We need an Eisenhower not a Jackson.
One of just hundreds of examples of Trump word salad.
https://thelastofthemillenniums.wordpress.com/2016/04/30/living-in-a-nuclear-donald-trump-world-nuclear-word-salad/
The GOP obsession over teleprompters is freaking weird. Somehow it is better to come out with Palin or Trump word salad rather than have a coherent speech. Anyway, if you want to cognitively test one test both.
“Trump’s outrageous comments and actions that are leading the news today. They’re not really surprising to me.”
Notice that once again Trump is awful bu tit doesnt merit any real attention because he is awful all of the time. Obama once said “elections have consequences” and that merited a post about how awful he was. If only that were the worst thing Trump ever said or did.
Steve
That wasn’t what the post was about. Its subject was what he might’ve done better.
I had several major complaints about Obama:
1. He turned his attention away from the economy prematurely.
2. He failed to learn the lesson of Afghanistan.
3. He quickly turned from being a president of all of the people to consolidating Democratic support.
What is convincing evidence of Biden’s physical strength to serve 4 years —- swimming in the Mississippi for an hour?
We’ve reached peak partisan naval-gazing when each side is battling over whose candidate is the most incoherent, as if being slightly more coherent or self-aware than the lowest possible standard is some kind of virtue.
The choices are what they are. I would not have nominated either one of these guys and would have preferred someone on the “L” ticket besides Jorgenson as well. South Park sums it up well:
https://southpark.cc.com/clips/q26yme/will-you-be-voting-this-year
“1. He turned his attention away from the economy prematurely.
2. He failed to learn the lesson of Afghanistan.
3. He quickly turned from being a president of all of the people to consolidating Democratic support.”
Agree with first 2. Dont think the GOP ever had any any intention of working with Obama so not sure he had much option about #3. I guess I should note that Trump figured out right away the Dems wouldnt work with him and never even tried. Kind of a shame since he is the greatest deal maker the world has ever seen. If he had tried I am sure he could have done it.
Steve
‘I could vote for Joe Biden if a) he’d take, pass, and publish the results of a cognitive assessment and b) I were convinced he’d serve all four years of his term.’
That’s assuming he’s tested by someone you would trust, I suppose. And if he doesn’t pass the test and/or won’t promise to serve out a term, will you still vote for him?
‘I don’t really have much to say about the various stories about President Trump’s outrageous comments and actions that are leading the news today.’
Which ones? The flat-out anonymous slander from the Atlantic, or the gotcha from Bob Woodward the hero of Watergate held onto for months? Which is belied by OMB’s actual actions? Or are there new ones out there I’m not aware of?
No.
Guess we’ll never know. The evidence usually presented for that was said by Mitch McConnell in 2010, two weeks before the mid-term elections. That was after President Obama had noted that “elections have consequences”, the Republican leadership had been cut out of negotiations for two years, and the Democrats had passed the first-ever piece of social legislation strictly on a partisan basis. IMO the context matters.
That’s interesting, Dave. That would be exactly my list of non-jerks. And so to my point, being a jerk is not a rare event, but 50/50 plus or minus.
Yeah, not a manager. But same question: how many since Kennedy have been?
But I disagree strongly on politician. He’s the perfect politician.
As always, I point out, you may not agree with him on all policy. That’s why we vote. But if you step back, IMHO, he’s right on (managed) trade, immigration, US adventurism, being NATO’s sucker, the profile of court appointees, China as enemy, law and order. I could go on.
Its not clear to me that the Democrat platform or the Biden/Harris team are on the same page. In fact, they appear to be polar opposites.
I notice no one commented on Joe’s performance I posted. It was not posted to embarrass the man. It just was what it was.
They have been reduced to pre-scripted questions……….and teleprompted answers, that he still can’t deliver. And he looked labored.
I used the word sad, which was my first instinct. Its also scary. I have in the past noted that I take a dim view of the Joe as senile narrative. Its just too easy and professionally unsupported.
But seriously, people, look at that video. What is your reaction? WTF.
Actually, the evidence for obstruction goes back further. There was the McConnell caucus meeting a couple of days after Obama took office the Frank Lutz dinner the day of the inauguration. You are correct, context matters.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/republican-party-obstructionism-victory-trump-214498
Steve
Has anyone’s views about what Obama could have done better changed since there were a series of posts back in Jan 2017?
My only new observation compared to then is Obama should have refrained his administration from running dirty tricks on Trump during the 2016 campaign and the transition.
As for Biden; the actuarial tables state his mortality risk is 25% over the next 4 years. On top of that is the chance of a disabling ailment.
But Deng Xiaoping ran China well when he was 76 until about 83 or so. So it isn’t unheard of.
When relitigating the Obama Presidency, I think it’s important to remember that Pres. Obama deferred many things to Democrats in Congress. The biggest example of this is Obamacare which is misnamed. Obama wasn’t writing the bill, the Democratic House and Senate Leadership was. It was that leadership that shut out the GoP because they assumed at the beginning they didn’t need GoP votes because they had 60 in the Senate. And if you go back and look at the health care reform debate in particular, you’ll see that it was entirely Democrats negotiating with other Democrats. The Democratic leadership weren’t trying to get GoP votes, they were trying to get moderate Dem votes, hence the Stupak amendments and other bones thrown to the blue dogs, and pork put into the legislation designed to appeal to specific Democratic Senators. There was no bipartisanship at all – Democratic leaders merely offered to throw a couple of ideas into the legislation hoping to get a couple of Republicans on board. That was the limit of what they were willing to compromise on. And that was a rational course of action because Democrats had the votes in their own caucus and decided early they didn’t need GoP votes.
Not that the GoP covered itself in glory either.
I think Pres. Obama’s biggest problem is that he took a professorial approach for much of his first term and then turned to Executive action in his second. He didn’t engage in the retail politics and deal-making. He seemed to believe a good advocacy speech was more powerful than it actually was.
And you can look at the evidence today. Compare Bill Clinton’s legacy to Obama’s. Clinton spun his eight years in office into two decades of being the biggest and most important player in Democratic politics – to the point where his wife essentially owned the Democratic party. Pres. Obama has none of that influence, did not transform his organization into an influential faction in Democratic politics and is even now criticized by many on the left.
With the Clinton’s fading, Biden is the last gasp of a brand of centrist Democratic politics. The Democratic party is up for grabs now and will be vulnerable to a leftist populist takeover. It almost happened this cycle and was only avoided by a relative handful of moderate and conservative African-American primary voters.
Anyway, I’m rambling now.
This is something that can’t be emphasized enough. I am not aligned with the technocrats among the Democrats. I am certainly not aligned with the progressives and loony left. I am aligned with the moderate and conservative Democratic blacks. That’s consistent with my primary voting record. And that’s not in the patronizing way so common among progressives.
“There was no bipartisanship at all – Democratic leaders merely offered to throw a couple of ideas into the legislation hoping to get a couple of Republicans on board. That was the limit of what they were willing to compromise on.”
This is not really true. The Democrats spent months courting the Gang of Six. They accepted over 150 GOP amendments. However, they finally figured out the GOP was just delaying. The Tea Party, remember the angryTown Halls, made it clear they didnt want any compromise. They almost lost the chance to pass Obamacare when Kennedy died so the delaying tactics almost worked.
I will say that it is a tribute to the right wing press that people believe what Andy wrote. If you keep repeating the same lie all of the time almost everyone starts to believe it.
Steve
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/08/01/set-health-record-straight-republicans-helped-craft-obamacare-ross-baker-column/523952001/
steve,
The reality is that the leadership made deals with other Democrats to get their votes -something they weren’t willing to do with Republicans. The article’s claims that the Democrats “spent enormous time and effort” wooing the GoP must be compared to the actual record where all the “deals” were actually aimed at Democrats and not Republicans.
https://www.politico.com/story/2009/12/payoffs-for-states-get-reid-to-60-030815
It was very similar in the house where Pelosi was force to give in to the demands of Stupak’s Democratic faction. Quite obviously no such efforts were made to secure GoP votes.
The actual actions of the House and Senate leadership are dispositive of their intentions. Claims that this is a “lie” are without merit.