> > A certain group of highly educated urban liberals is shocked by Trump.
> 3 million more people voted for Hillary than Trump.
As I said, I’m not using this as a pejorative. I’m not just talking about folks who voted for Hillary, but ones who were despondent when Trump won. I worked late on election night and got home to an election watching party with DC yuppies and when I walked in the door I thought someone had died. These are the folks who were so stunned the started looking around for an explanation. And social media just happened to be rising at the same time.
Not all Hillary voters reacted that way. My mom and dad voted for Hillary. But they weren’t shocked by the existence of Trump. They didn’t see it as an indictment of the system. They didn’t go on the whole Russia collusion ride like all of my friends. (Not coincidentally, they supported Biden from the start. Meanwhile, I was shocked when Warren and Harris did so poorly, when it came to voting, because that’s who all my grad-school educated urban friends supported.)
I don't understand how anybody cannot be shocked by Trump. He's unlike any previous president, he has aggressively pursued his radical agenda, has broken every norm that has gotten in his way, communicates in purposefully shocking ways. I could go on and on. His supporters are also shocked though in a good way. He's the most polarizing president of our lifetimes by far. Anybody who thinks he is normal is just not paying attention.
I’m talking about the period immediately after the election, before trying to dismiss Comey, etc.
And don’t get me wrong, he’s not fit for office, but the idea that there is anything “radical” about his agenda, before or after the election, is pure gaslighting.
He actually ran on a moderate Republican platform. He committed to protecting Social Security and Medicare off the bat. (Remember Bush and Gore fighting over the “lock box?” Even fricking Sweden has partislly privatized their social security.) Even though it was right after Obergefell he said pretty much nothing about same-sex marriage. He criticized Clinton for her past criminal justice stances. Bluster aside, even his immigration platform wasn’t nuts. Liberal darling Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand became prime minister by campaigning on cutting legal immigration by half. Trump didn’t even do that. He focused on stopping illegal immigration, which 60% of Americans worry about: https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Pro....
His agenda also hasn’t been “radical.” What has he done? He has banned refugees and immigrants from certain countries—all ones you would expect given the political status, such as North Korea and Yemen. The only one on the current list that looks odd is Nigeria, but Trump instituted that ban at the same as the EU imposed Visa restrictions on Nigeria (February 2020): https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/eu-plans-to-impose-vis...
He repealed a bunch of unpopular environmental regulations Obama pushed through in the last couple of years of his final term. This was after his 2012 campaign, where Obama criticized Romney for standing in front of a coal plant and saying “this kills.” https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2012/oct/16/barack-oba...
> Governor, when you were governor of Massachusetts, you stood in front of a coal plant and pointed at it and said, ‘This plant kills,’ and took great pride in shutting it down. And now suddenly you're a big champion of coal," Obama said.
> You wouldn’t always know it ,but it went up every year I was president,” he said to applause. “That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas that was me, people.”
So yeah, Obama waited until the last couple of years of his term to push through some unpopular environments rules such as changes to that would require farmers to get federal permits to drain ponds in their land, and things like that. And Trump repealed them just as easily. That’s what happens between administrations.
Then you had the First Step Act, which was a progressive step.
He appointed three justices who were prominent in conservative legal circles long before Trump came in the scene.
So what exactly about his agenda was “radical?” Even if he had succeeded in things like repealing the ACA, that would have taken us back to 2008? (And Trump genuinely didn’t want the total repeal option without any replacement. He was the one who crafted the repeal and replace idea, while previously republicans had just wanted to repeal.)
Here's a list of radical actions, even if you think these were good ideas I don't see how you can argue they're not radical in the sense that it's outside anything previous presidents have tried to do
- increased military spending to Iraq war levels during peace time
- trillion dollar deficits during boom times
- fired dozens of cabinet members and other top officials whenever they didn't display dictator levels of obsequience to him
- got impeached for using US diplomacy for personal political gains
- tried to kick millions off of SNAP
- had DOJ help states kick people off voter roles
- reduced confidence in the election process
- changed DOJ's long standing definition of civil rights to instead protect religious people and white and asian discrimination
- pulled out of major international agreements with little notice including the Paris Agreement and the Iran deal
- attacked european allieas and weakened NATO
- cut legal immigration in a bunch of ways including cut refugee by 80% and cut H1B. And implemented draconian inhumane policies on illegal immigrants.
- appointed hundreds of extremely ideological judges
(hopefully d ang doesn't slap us down for discussing politics)
> - fired dozens of cabinet members and other top officials whenever they didn't display dictator levels of obsequience to him
> - got impeached for using US diplomacy for personal political gains
Bad, but not radical.
> - tried to kick millions off of SNAP
Clinton did way more welfare reform than Trump.
> - had DOJ help states kick people off voter roles
Cleaning up voter rolls is required by federal law.
> - reduced confidence in the election process
Bad, but not radical.
> - changed DOJ's long standing definition of civil rights to instead protect religious people and white and asian discrimination
Not radical. In Evanston, Illinois, Asian kids are now being held back from returning to in-class instruction: https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-school-be-antiracist-a-new-.... We can debate the merits of this, but it's not radical to suggest that discrimination against asians is a violation of civil rights laws.
> - pulled out of major international agreements with little notice including the Paris Agreement and the Iran deal
Presidents change course on foreign policy all the time. Trump's foreign policy has been relatively successful.
> - attacked european allieas and weakened NATO
Are you talking about a concrete policy?
> - cut legal immigration in a bunch of ways including cut refugee by 80% and cut H1B.
Not radical. European countries have done the same thing recently, after realizing their 2015 actions on refugees were ill-advised. Calling a cut to H1B "radical" is hard to credit. Is every small shift to the right from a Republican President "radical?"
> And implemented draconian inhumane policies on illegal immigrants.
Very bad, maybe radical.
> - appointed hundreds of extremely ideological judges
No, just normal conservative judges. The "extremely ideological judges" are ones that think you can look at a 230-year old document and find new things in it that nobody realized were there before. We have normalized that gaslighting, but taking a view that the words on the page mean what they say isn't "radical."
To be fair, the Trump team targeted the electoral college win. If they had targeted the popular vote, i.e. campaigning in states that they wouldn't win outright, but could garner votes, they most likely would have won the popular vote. Meaning they could have won that game if they had tried.
Correct. The popular vote is meaningless for the same reason who is leading after 500 meters in a 10k is meaningless. Nobody is trying to win the popular vote. Most of the voting eligible population doesn’t vote, and we don’t necessarily know which way things would break if folks campaigned for those votes.
If you are in favor of the popular vote movement, how do you reconcile that for residents of sparsely populated states like Wyoming? Why would such residents bother to vote at all under the popular vote? (I would not)
A packed stadium rally in Pennsylvania would have about the same number of attendees as a packed stadium rally in Wyoming or Rhode Island. You couldn't just rely on predictable "safe states" won by voters going straight-party on ballots. As it is, there's barely any reason for a Democratic presidential nominee to show up in reliability red states, let alone offer them anything in a platform.
Switching to a popular vote could lessen the current extremism.
Social media is happening all over the world.
> A certain group of highly educated urban liberals is shocked by Trump.
3 million more people voted for Hillary than Trump. Biden is polling 10 points ahead of Trump.