6 hours ago, Magogan said:
I actually have no idea how people could even believe in Trump before the election. I think this will continue as long as he is president, but I cannot imagine that he will get re-elected. He wouldn't have been elected in the first place if the U.S. had been a real democracy with fair elections and more than two political parties. Seriously, over 300 million people represented by two parties? Minus the people not really represented because they live in red/blue states.
This is a point I've heard fairly frequently. That if there were more parties in our system then Trump wouldn't have been elected. Of course I can't say for certain if more parties would mean that Trump wouldn't have been elected, but looking in Europe (where there are a fair number of parties in each country), far-right populism seems to still be moderately successful. The AfD has a decent chunk of representation, Brexit happened, but I do contend that it seems a bit less successful? I also contend that Trump was never super popular, and given that he did not attain the popular vote, it's perhaps telling that another party's candidate could've won.
I'm not sure how much I agree with reasons for Trump/Trumpism's electoral victory. It's difficult to really understand what exactly happened. We may not understand for a very long time what happened, but one day we'll look back at this and say "Of course, it was obvious, how could we not have seen it then?"
5 hours ago, Bregma said:
The longest it can last is about 6 more years. That's assuming he can get re-elected at the end of his current term, and that he can't garner enough vote in state legislatures to get a two-thirds supermajority to pass a constitutional amendment to allow a president to serve more than 2 terms. Or maybe figure out how to pass a presidential decree to invalidate the constitution, because I wouldn't put it past him to try.
It can last a shorter time (no re-election, impeachment and removal, resignation, assassination, spontaneous human combustion), but that's the hard upper limit not subject to spin or propaganda.
Well there's also the notion of Trumpism as a movement. How much longer can it last? Will the supporters of Trump want MORE like Trump? Assuming he gets re-elected and finishes his second term, is this a new political force?
As for trying to amend/throw out the Constitution...agreed. It's really unlikely, but I wouldn't be surprised if he tried.
1 hour ago, d000hg said:
Until he gets impeached or really does something bigly stupid instead of just stupid. Somehow he's blundered from one controversy to another but never quite put his foot in it enough he can't get it out again.
Coupled with the fact he's been largely ineffective at actually doing anything, so lives mostly continue as they did before and the system trundles on.
I'd like to say there's no way he could possibly win a 2nd term but after the last few years, that would be too optimistic! When are the mid-terms, that should shed some light?
And that's just what blows my mind is how this administration is still even a thing after going from one idiocy to the next. He's done more idiotic things in office than any President in recent history.
Has he really been ineffective though? He's certainly done enough disastrous things that while not unrecoverable, are certainly going to take time to fix. That and he's only just started to ramp up things like the trade war.
But the next big question is will he finish out this term? Certainly there are enough scandals and investigations that could lead to impeachment. Assuming he survives to election season in 2020, could he get re-elected? His poll numbers show he isn't popular enough at least.