U.S. Politics

[OutByEaster?]

14 minutes ago, blandy said:

There's not much of an appetite, generally speaking, for detailed analysis or discussion. It's just a world of slogans and soundbites we live in.

I agree. 

There's no appetite, to the point where the Brexit debate and to a lesser extent the US Presidential campaigns didn't even bother to attempt to explain positions or concepts, our politicians don't do that anymore - there's more value in shouting "he's a wrong un" or wrapping your self in the flag, than boring, staid facts or explanation. I'd go further and say there's a belief in government that there's a danger in an educated electorate.

For me it's not a campaign against anything, it's a distrust formed out of consumerism, lead by the idea that it's more important to be thin than smart, it's knowing that whilst our authors, philosophers and scientists might struggle to book a table at Pizza Express, Joey Essex would need a police escort to get to the front door. 

 

[Awol]

9 minutes ago, blandy said:

True. It's hard to quote "people in general" to demonstrate a point. The best I can do s pick something like Brexit, where pretty much all the economists, most politicians, scientists and such like said "leaving will make the UK overall worse off" and yet they lost the vote. There's not much of an appetite, generally speaking, for detailed analysis or discussion. It's just a world of slogans and soundbites we live in.

It's not that leavers didn't hear or understand the experts, but that their decision wasn't based on GDP. 

The number one concern (according to polling) was sovereignty, the second was immigration.

The expertise was deployed in arguments that were of secondary concern, that's why Remain failed, imo.

[OutByEaster?]

3 minutes ago, Awol said:

The expertise was deployed in arguments that were of secondary concern, that's why Remain failed, imo.

An awful lot expertise was deployed in making sure that those arguments were of secondary concern. When you have two of the biggest selling daily papers giving their front pages and online content to immigration and sovereignty consistently for four or five years in the run up to the referendum, you have a fair question and a loaded electorate.

For Trump, with enough Fox, they didn't even need a fair question.

 

[blandy]

7 minutes ago, Awol said:

It's not that leavers didn't hear or understand the experts, but that their decision wasn't based on GDP. 

The number one concern (according to polling) was sovereignty, the second was immigration.

The expertise was deployed in arguments that were of secondary concern, that's why Remain failed, imo.

Fair comment. Yet the experts identifying that immigration is necessary for the NHS and for fruit picking and for all kinds of jobs... The experts saying that half of immigration is non-EU immigration. The experts pointing out that May and Cameron, despite promises to the contrary have allowed immigration to go up and not be in the 10s of thousands....

People pointing out that UK citizens also migrate....

were all Trumped by "take back control" nonsense.

 

[blandy]

If you want to hear Trump speak differently have a look at this recent interview for a different audience than rednecks. on Russia today. Scroll on to about 5 minutes

 

[blandy]

16 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Joey Essex would need a police escort to get to the front door. 

Off topic, I suppose, but I suspect he's pretty clever.

[StefanAVFC]

27 minutes ago, blandy said:

I'll give you one reason. His campaign was all about the crooks in charge need to be got rid rid of - it was a harnessing of people's anger with the Governing elite, but as POTUS he will be part of the governing elite. So, sure, some of the time he can still rage against (say) Big Corp. or whoever for taking jobs overseas. But other times he's got to persuade people who are not blue collar rust belt people. He's got to (as he himself said) do deals, persuade people who themselves have money, power, intelligence. When /if he talks to wall street, or to the Generals or the spooks, or Merkel or Xi Jinping or Putin etc. his brash aggressive "drain the swamp" stuff will go. And after he's talked to them, he's going to have to communicate to the American people. He's going to have to do annual state of the union addresses.

I guarantee he'll change his mode of speaking.

Oh, and there's his massive ego and desire not to be thought of as a pillock. A kind of "I'm President, I can't talk like a dick, I have to show how smart I am"

We'll have to wait and see but I fear you have misplaced optimism.

I had something written out for each point but I don't think we are going to change each other's minds. So I will drop out of this discussion as it's been going on all day and the missus is getting annoyed me for politics'ing all day

Edited January 1, 2017 by StefanAVFC

[StefanAVFC]

One final thing. (I know )

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/01/donald-trump-unfair-blame-russia-election-hacking-interference

Quote

Trump questions claims of Russian hacking: 'I know things others don't'

Donald Trump has expressed continued skepticism over whether Russia was responsible for computer hacks of Democratic party officials.

In remarks to reporters upon entering a New Year’s Eve celebration at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Saturday night, Trump warned against being quick to pin the blame on Russia for the hacking of US emails.

Asked what that information included, the president-elect said: “You will find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.” He did not elaborate, although in a statement released on Thursday in response to Obama’s sanctions, he said he would meet intelligence officials.

The self-confessed luddite knows more than the POTUS, Dems, GOP, FBI and CIA.

He also promised he'd have a press conference about his conflicts of interest and that has been put off and put off. I wonder if he'll put the above off too.

Also for the 'he'll change' argument.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/trump-expected-embrace-bold-twitter-44497772

Quote

Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer says he expects President-elect Donald Trump will boldly use Twitter to make major policy announcements.

Trump was scolded by foreign policy experts last month when he used Twitter as the venue to say that the U.S. should greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capacity until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nuclear weapons.

Spicer said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that he thinks it freaks the mainstream media out that Trump has more than 45 million people following him on social media. He says Trump doesn't need to funnel his comments through mainstream media outlets.

Spicer says when Trump tweets, he gets results.

 

Edited January 1, 2017 by StefanAVFC

[Chindie]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

I dunno. On two levels I think that's wrong. Firstly ALL politicians going for significant jobs/roles have a team of coaches and spin doctors and such like. Trump is no different. To think there wouldn't have been a strong element of tactics behind his communication is IMO naive.

I think he's not exactly a fool, but that he will be manipulated. I think he's deeply flawed, vain, dishonest, short tempered, rude, misogynyst, probably racist and a whole bunch of other stuff, but he's also got some clear talents to have "made it" in terms of TV, Business and now politics.

On two levels you've misread me. 

Of course he has a team behind him. They're doing the research and feeding him the buzzwords and whatnot. I don't think for a second Trump walked out wherever he went and did everything completely off the cuff - he was advised on the boxes to tick. I'll wager they tried to corral his mannerisms into something more slick because they knew he wasn't going to walk the election and even if their apparent strategy was to target extremely specific battleground states and the obvious thing to do to appeal as widely as possible is to polish everything about him. Except they didn't. Because the Donald Trump of the campaign trail is the same Donald Trump that's walked the earth in the public eye for the last 30 years. His public persona didn't change. The only thing politically that's changed is his party. And that changed a lot in that time. 

The actual content coming out of his mouth was strategically decided. That isn't the point I'm arguing. The point being argued is the manner of what comes out of his mouth. There seems to be a push that Donald's bizarre patter is a carefully designed tool in his arsenal. It isn't. The content is, the nature isn't, and I'd argue the nature actually undermines the content (even accepting the content is horseshit).

I don't mean he is a fool all ends up. It's a very lucky fool that manages to have the life he has lead, even if the cards were stacked for him from birth. Politically though, he's a moron. The 'intelligentsia' can't bear to accept that a loudmouthed brash egotist has come in and won whilst seemingly being a vile human being and running on a ticket of insulting his opposition and promising the moon on a stick. So they've sought to save their own face by deciding seemingly everything about Trump was a clever planned tactic, so his dumb way of speaking is actually a clever choice of style. When the reality is a loudmouthed brash egotist won because he ran on a ticket of insulting his opposition and promising the moon on the stick.

Donald Trump talks like an idiot, because he talks like an idiot. Nothing more. His team gave him 'the best words' to say, and perhaps they managed to tell him that repetition is a good rhetorical device (or perhaps he naturally does it), but Donald Trump's cadence isn't some brilliant tactic of a grand strategy.

Edited January 1, 2017 by Chindie

[OutByEaster?]

I disagree, I think he's a fool with a natural gift, his communication is unorthodox but he gets through better than just about any other politician in the US. I think he was 'discovered' rather than trained. I think he's grown up surrounded by salesmen and board members and developed a strange gift for self promotion and sales.

 

[Chindie]

If any of the salespeople I've worked with did a pitch in that style they'd be sacked. 

I wholeheartedly disagree.

[Genie]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

Off topic, I suppose, but I suspect he's pretty clever.

I don't.

Its like the Jade Goody argument, people say she must be really clever cos she made over £2m. She wasn't, it's just the sign of the times. People pay her to go in front of the camera and look stupid. Easy money.

[StefanAVFC]

19 minutes ago, Chindie said:

I don't mean he is a fool all ends up. It's a very lucky fool that manages to have the life he has lead, even if the cards were stacked for him from birth. Politically though, he's a moron. The 'intelligentsia' can't bear to accept that a loudmouthed brash egotist has come in and won whilst seemingly being a vile human being and running on a ticket of insulting his opposition and promising the moon on a stick. So they've sought to save their own face by deciding seemingly everything about Trump was a clever planned tactic, so his dumb way of speaking is actually a clever choice of style. When the reality is a loudmouthed brash egotist won because he ran on a ticket of insulting his opposition and promising the moon on the stick.

Again, I think this is spot on.

He's a narcissist first and foremost surrounded by people who massage his ego. I can't see him changing and suddenly becoming more presidential on Jan 20th and those who think he will are in for a rude awakening IMO.

[HanoiVillan]

4 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

 

 

We'll have to disagree. There will always be states that swing blue or red and it will never change. To use Texas for your original example was wrong IMO. Giving Trump credit for winning Texas is a moot point.

On the video, fair enough, but it's not exactly a full picture of the speech is it. However, I take your point. 

On the voting patterns of American states, you're just wrong. There's not anything to disagree about. States do change. Since 1964, not one state has voted for the same party in every election:

Every state is 'reliable' for one party, until it isn't. Assuming that X state can't possibly change hands is how Clinton managed to lose Michigan by never campaigning there. As for Texas specifically - although I was using it as a stand-in for any state that Trump won, I did choose it specifically as a state he at one point seemed close to losing. From a search 'presidential election 2016 polls texas':

Note I'm not saying it was likely that she would win. She never had a better than 10% chance of winning. But nevertheless, he still had to win it, and if he hadn't, he would have lost the election. 

Your initial comment was that only 70k votes 'mattered'. We know that isn't true, because if he only won 70k votes and no others, he wouldn't have won even one state. The point I'm making - and this is the limit of the point I was making - is that those votes were the ones that were decisive, not the only ones that mattered, and that this is not the same thing. If you don't win the states that you're favourite to win, you're in trouble. As Hillary should know only too well. 

[Awol]

8 hours ago, blandy said:

Fair comment. Yet the experts identifying that immigration is necessary for the NHS and for fruit picking and for all kinds of jobs... The experts saying that half of immigration is non-EU immigration. The experts pointing out that May and Cameron, despite promises to the contrary have allowed immigration to go up and not be in the 10s of thousands....

People pointing out that UK citizens also migrate....

were all Trumped by "take back control" nonsense.

 

Your last sentence is where it went wrong for Remain.

It was precisely "control" that was at issue for Leave voters so both official and unofficial Leave campaigns were arguing for controlled immigration.

The Remain campaign heard "no immigration" because that's the stereotype of the Leave supporters that they'd created for themselves. 

The Remain campaign then argued against an extreme point of view that wasn't being made and mostly labeled the other side as xenephobic and racist.

It was ultimately a failure to listen.

[LondonLax]

10 hours ago, Davkaus said:

I actually completely missed this when it happened, and saw it during Charlie Brooker's show a few days ago. It's one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen.

 

Na, The Simpsons got in first. 

 

Edited January 2, 2017 by LondonLax

[StefanAVFC]

3 hours ago, Awol said:

Your last sentence is where it went wrong for Remain.

It was precisely "control" that was at issue for Leave voters so both official and unofficial Leave campaigns were arguing for controlled immigration.

The Remain campaign heard "no immigration" because that's the stereotype of the Leave supporters that they'd created for themselves. 

The Remain campaign then argued against an extreme point of view that wasn't being made and mostly labeled the other side as xenephobic and racist.

It was ultimately a failure to listen.

That is one massive oversimplification.

"Controlled immigration" was just a pair of buzzwords anyway. We already have control of non-EU immigration, it's higher than EU immigration and the government have chosen to not control it. It's all very cynical politics. Boris can make statements like this:

Quote

Mr Johnson, a leading figure in the campaign to get Britain out of the EU in June's referendum, said he was pro-immigration but there was "no public consent for the scale of immigration we are seeing" and the situation was "completely out of control".

He said that the only solution was to leave the EU, saying that a vote to stay in the union would mean people "kissing goodbye permanently to control of immigration".

When his party are clearly making no effort to reduce non-EU immigration other than attacking foreign students.

For what means did people want controlled immigration also? Many people had different motives from purely not liking immigrants, (not a majority viewpoint but definitely present) wanting their community to be more British, EU immigrants taking jobs (bunkum), EU immigrants overloading public services, (bunkum) "wanting less Muslims in the country"; (nothing to do with the EU) I could go on. 

So I'm left thinking what actual, provable reason do people want controlled immigration from the EU? Purely to take back control? Then we're back to buzzwords and empty rhetoric again. I could understand it if we were totally 'land-bordered' with other EU countries and had experienced the atrocities other EU countries have faced recently, but really, what does taking back control over immigration with regards to EU citizens actually look like? Less Polish people coming here to pick fruit and more British people doing it instead? Less Bulgarian factory workers? I really struggle to see the validity of the argument IMO. What makes people believe that migration (EU and non-EU) will fall? We will still need the same EU workers to do the same jobs. And using non-EU immigration (that we have full control over) as an example, the government haven't reduced it.

So then it boils down to an illusion of control. We'll still let in the same numbers, but we have control and we could change it whenever we want! (but we won't because we'll realise that the level of EU immigration we have is essential) And the same people who are angry now will still be angry then. Have you noticed that since the referendum, everyone is still angry? I'd even go as far to say that leavers are more angry than remainers at this point. Going on social media and the endless 'remoaner' jibes made by real-life grown up members of parliament. I've accepted we're leaving and so has every single person who I've spoken to who voted remain. Any anger from the remain side now comes from a total lack of plan and transparency in the process and more empty nationalistic bollocks from May.

Maybe I'm just cynical.

The thing that makes me laugh about this whole empty 'take back control' rhetoric is that the working classes were rabble-roused to take back control by millionaire politicians and overwhelmingly voted to hand take back control and hand it over to the Tories. They've definitely got the interests of those Northern industry workers at heart. Similar to Trump and the rust belt states. How can he bring jobs back into dead industries and from robots? He can't.

"Taking back control" and making Britain feel British again is a great thing to rally around. If it was an entirely innocent sentiment then I would agree with it. Really though, it's a trick designed to create an enemy of somebody who isn't an enemy at all. Unite British people against anybody different. Then creating a mistrust of experts and intellectuals. Creating a culture where mob rule is more accepted than representative elected officials. The same rhetoric peddled by the DM, Sun, Express etc. Dangerously effective and history shows it works.

But yes, it was remain's fault for not listening and labelling people.

I'm aware I've gone very far off topic here, but Awol's continued insistence that Leave won because of the attitude and actions of remain and Trump won because of the Dems has irked me.

I'm also aware this is almost definitely an incoherent ramble (Trump-esque!) but I haven't slept yet. (arsing Ryanair and their graveyard hour flights and boyfriend taxi service)

[villaglint]

5 hours ago, Awol said:

Your last sentence is where it went wrong for Remain.

It was precisely "control" that was at issue for Leave voters so both official and unofficial Leave campaigns were arguing for controlled immigration.

The Remain campaign heard "no immigration" because that's the stereotype of the Leave supporters that they'd created for themselves. 

The Remain campaign then argued against an extreme point of view that wasn't being made and mostly labeled the other side as xenephobic and racist.

It was ultimately a failure to listen.

No. I'm pretty sure the Russians hacked it they just didn't leave fingerprints on this one. 

[tonyh29]

6 hours ago, Awol said:

It was ultimately a failure to listen.

Nail on the head right there , I'm not really sure anyone can argue otherwise ... Politcs isn't about having the best policies it's about understanding the mood , something Trumps team managed and Clintons tesm didn't 

[chrisp65]

Many people have a healthy distrust of politicians, want jobs, dislike 'globalisation'.

Trump spent less money pushing a simple message about not being a politician, creating jobs and being anti globalisation. he did this in key states.

Clinton was as establishment as its possible to be and played mannequin challenge on a jet with Bon Jovi. Her team dismissed Trump and read it wrong.

 

I appreciate that's a massive scrunched up simplification, but there was a large poll of 129,000,000 voters (in which neither candidate achieved 50.1%) and that's how it panned out.