And let’s not forget Putin’s war with Ukraine and his demands of Kompremat. worry about our part in NATO. Friends and family across the world are calling, wondering WTF is going on here. Didn’t the US put a massive effort into working with Democratic countries to rid the world of Hitlerism. Now most of the population is supporting herr Drumph into another bout of it.
From the BBC today: Exit polls suggested Latinos in Pennsylvania amounted to about 5% of the total vote. Trump garnered 42% of that vote, compared to 27% when he ran against Joe Biden in 2020. The polls will continue to change as votes are counted, but are broadly representative of electoral trends. In the state's "Latino belt" - an eastern industrial corridor that has shifted to the right in the last two elections - some voters said they were not surprised by the result. "It's simple, really. We liked the way things were four years ago," said Samuel Negron, a Pennsylvania state constable and member of the large Puerto Rican community in the city of Allentown. Mr Negron, and other Trump supporters in the now majority-Latino city, listed other reasons that their community was drifting towards Trump, including social issues and a perception that their family values now align more with the Republican Party. The most common factor, however, was the economy - specifically, inflation. "Out here, you pay $5 for a dozen eggs. It used to be $1, or even 99 cents," Mr Negron added. "A lot of us have woken up, in my opinion, from Democratic lies that things have been better. We realised things were better then."
Not to wade into this - but - he says he chose to stop believing the Dems lies - in favor of a guy who only knows how to lie. And he says it's "simple" really - showing how much of a simpleton he is. Things were better then....I mean what happened in the interim? .... I can't recall. Was there a global crisis that had the government paying trillions in stimulus money to prevent the country from caving in? Did Samuel take the stimulus checks without batting an eyelid? I bet he did. And you ********ing fraudulent ********er - the price of eggs in Allentown, PA is 2.99. Not 5 dollars. And that's before you go to Costco - where it's 1.99. Just admit you don't know anything and were taken in by a conman - which is what conmen do.
You saw what I did there... This is the average voter speaking. Reality, perceptions, emotions, etc. It's easy to tear the reasoning apart but this is what drives elections, for better or worse.
I spent a fair amount of my corporate and consulting time developing and executing leadership succession plans. I'd probably use this election as an example of a good succession plan that wasn't properly executed (what most typically happens in the corporate world). In 2019 both parties had badly aging national leaderships; a new generation of younger leaders needed to get put in place. The Dems had imo a pretty solid succession plan with Biden as the one term transition to a next generation candidate in Harris. Biden was a senior D.C. insider, a lunch pail Dem who could counter Trump's working class appeal and calm the waters for four years after the Trump chaos, then turn the reins over to Harris for 2024 seamlessly. But, it wasn't seamless. Old Biden's ego got in the way, and Obama and Clinton apparently couldn't counsel him forcefully enough in 2021 that he needed to get behind the execution of the plan that had been put in place. We all know what happened after that.
A bigger issue - and it can be debated for a long time - if they (Pelosi, Obama, Clinton) had just let Biden run in 2016 instead of forcing him to the side to mourn for his son (which he of course was going to do anyway) in favor of Hilary - we'd never have had Trump. Biden would have wiped the floor with him.
I've stayed away from the tv/online news the past 2 days, apart from local news. not bad for my BP or mental health tbh. Would love to do that for the next 4 years but I tried that in 2016 and it didn't last long.
Like driving down the Mtn Hwy with a massive concern about if your leaking brakes will work having just driven past an auto repair shop 5 miles back because you were in a hurry.....
I don't know if that happened or if he really didn;t want in (any source material here?). I've never delved into the nitty gritty of it, but if that was the case, it's another reason to add to the bucket of annoyance that is Hilary Clinton.
Unfortunately for his economics degree, he didn;t realize what are the causes of inflation. Socrates was right, it seems, well via his student's student Aristotle - If you have too many voices (bloody social media) in a polis outside some base control (the historical up-front press structure) you lose the ability to conduct affairs. And what you get are people like Steve Bannon who would never have been listened to or given air-time or credence outside of a soapbox somewhere in any sanely functioning system.
I’d double, triple and quadruple rep these posts if I could. I wouldn’t quintuple rep them, because then you’d think I was a soft touch or that I had a man crush on you both. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that! ).
This is a wider problem for the Democratic party. For the last 10-15 years it's felt like the party has worked very hard to project a clean cut organized image to the outside world which as allowed them to be cast as the establishment party, in world where people don't like the establishment. All I heard for the last 3 months is how great the Harris campaign has been and how chaotic the Trump campaign was. Well apparently Americans like Chaos, and more importantly don't like being dictated to. Since 1992 I would argue that the dems have had 4 open primaries. '92, '04, '08, '20. Every other election there was very much a feeling that the fix was in. And even in '04, and '20 the establishment centrist candidate won after some powerful fingers were placed on the scale. It just feels like the dems are afraid to let the people have a say, which makes it hard to say "trust us". I know I know this argument falls down when the opposition are treasonous, liars but still the dems aren't doing a great job of holding up their end of the bargain of giving us a good alternative.
If you put this election in a larger context, in almost any democratic country this last year or two the party in charge during 2020-2022 has been thrown out of power. It happened in France, the UK, Austria, Mexico, S. Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. In Belgium and Germany leading parties suffered significant setbacks - with the far-right AfD party taking outright majorities in several German states (and just this week the German governing coalition collapsed, which opens up the possibility that some deal may have to be done with AfD). So taking this into consideration, you might argue that Trump benefited more from the general dissatisfaction of people with post-pandemic inflation and economic issues. Those of us who are actually typing about this are probably much more politically engaged and partisan than most people. I wish that your average voter would pay more attention to the issues and positions and not make voting decisions based on poorly-thought out base pocketbook issues, but that clearly is not going to happen.
To completely change the subject, there is this band...being an old R&R 'head' from way back, and then going thru the 'raise a family' phase of life and not really paying attention to 'modern' music scenes since, I have only occasionally stumbled onto bands like Nirvana by accident. Got interested in this band because I loved the music to Boardwalk Empire and looked them up. Last nite watching Slow Horses, the music resulted in my digging into my memory banks to remember that band and today have been playing more of their stuff. So, only 3 decades late, I present,,, Brian Jonestown Massacre. The more I play the more I like it. Is there a 90's channel on Sirius for more like this?
Brian Jonestown Massacre or massacree as Arlo Guthrie might put it.... "In November of 24 there was a Washington Massacree When the stupidly inept let the toddler down off knee etc, etc" anyway, digressing aside.... I used to know one of those guys through another friend who was in the SF alt rock music scene - but a tier further down the local gigs' food chain 20 or so years ago... Saw 'em here and there - not bad..... quite a few good bands like that in that period Built To Spill My Morning Jacket and the Icelandic Sigur Ros who were a cut above all those .... IMO here's Built to Spill doing a great cover of Neil Young's Trump the B@stard sorry, force of habit - I meant "Cortez the killer" wah-wah-ing itself into somewhere near oblivion....
so, it's the "not so great looking" alternative versus the Frederick Forsyth version.....? Of course, unfortunately for the likes of us, the average brain-loser is beyond this conception also......
My problem isn't with people's often natural proclivity to be stupid or short term blindsided by greedy needs- if a majority of people, freely allowed, want to vote for Trump, have at it. I personally don't believe any majority of people not being massively lied to from every which way would ever want to do that... (and I think most on here know my dark view on how the internet age has made it a hundred times easier to lie flatly to masses of people... my problem is with the scum like Lyndsey Graham and Elon Musk who lie blatantly about their own hypocritical positions on whether Trump should be in jail or not prior to this. That, as Vito Corleone said, I do not forgive....
Yep, great points. There was a palpable feeling of relief when the French left and center-left coalesced to keep Le Pen out. I remember reading at the time that as bad as Le Pen was, she had moved her policies to the center somewhat to make her more politically acceptable. The point was made that in her move to center, she had become less radical than even Lumpy. Obvious there are a few assumptions there, but more right wing than Le Pen? Not sure that’s something I’d be including on my résumé.
A good look at one demographic the Democrats got badly wrong. I don’t agree with all of it, but enough of it resonates and some excellent points.
wonder what this Twerp might have said about the Olympics in 1936 if he had been IOCC Commissioner......