Donald Trump is sorry

[TitanTiger 20,483]

 

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Donald Trump Is Sorry

If you haven’t watched the Chris Wallace interview with President Trump on Fox News Sunday, I urge you to do so. Here is a link. It is as devastating as they say. If you are a conservative, you can’t find anything good in this session. Wallace doesn’t do anything special here — he simply does his job as a professional journalist — but Trump destroys himself. We are led by an incompetent who, even with his presidency on the line, and even with the Left more radical and destructive than it has ever been, is staggeringly unfit for the job. Don’t take my word for it — just watch.

Yuval Levin offers a short but good analysis in National Review. Levin looks past Trump’s crackpot answers about the pandemic, and focuses on Trump’s engulfing self pity. In his final question, Wallace tossed Trump a softball, asking the president how he will look back on his years in the White House. Levin quotes the transcript at length, then says:

Asked to reflect on his term so far as he seeks re-election, the president’s answer is that he was treated unfairly. Even when he is literally invited by his interviewer to say good things about himself, all he can reach for is resentment.

More:

And of course, he’s not wrong. The sense of resentment he has channeled has been rooted in some important realities, and even his own sense that he has been treated unfairly by his opponents as president is not mistaken. Sure he has. But that this sense of resentment is chiefly what drives him, that he can’t see past it or point beyond it, has been a crucial factor in many of his biggest failures as an executive.

He has treated the world’s most powerful job as a stage from which to vent his frustrations with the world’s mistreatment of him, and this has often kept him from advancing durable aims, from capitalizing on opportunities, from learning from mistakes, and from leading. In reasonably good times, it meant that he turned our national politics into a reality-television performance—focused, as those often are, on the drama of bruised egos. But in a time of crisis, it has left him incapable of rising to the challenge of his job, and the consequences have been dire.

Read it all. 

Levin nails it — or rather, he identifies what has made Trump’s presidency a massive failure: his catastrophic egotism.

One of the things that drew me from my college liberalism to conservatism back in the late 1980s and early 1990s was the way conservatives talked about personal responsibility. You can say that American conservatives have had a blind spot about structural inequities and problems, and you would be right about that to a certain extent. But for me, back then, I found it so depressing how the Left, which I had supported, blamed society for everything. When my father and I would argue about politics back then, he would tell me that just you wait until you get out into the real world, and have to start paying your own way. Then you’ll see. I thought he was just throwing cliches at me because he didn’t have good answers to the questions I was throwing at him.

Well, he was right. There’s nothing like seeing how much is taken out of your paycheck in taxes to start to sober you up. What’s more, I lived after college in a part of the city that had something of a crime problem. I was safe on campus, but I was no longer living on campus. I had to think more realistically about what caused crime, and how we as a society should deal with it. Eventually all my liberal pieties began to shrivel up. It’s not like the light dawned on me and suddenly I realized that the Republicans were right about everything. I didn’t, and they weren’t. But I did start to understand that disorder in society began with disorder in the individual soul, and in the family. For all their faults, conservatives understood that, and they didn’t pity themselves.

A couple of decades later, when I was well established as a conservative opinion journalist, I read Clarence Thomas’s memoir,My Grandfather’s Son. If you haven’t read it, you can get the gist of it in the surprisingly good recent PBS profile of Justice Thomas. 

He grew up in grinding Southern poverty, and in the humiliation and oppression of segregation. Thomas was raised by his maternal grandfather, Myers Anderson, who was a working man, and a hard man who believed that only discipline and education offered a way out. Clarence rebelled against his grandfather, but later came to be deeply grateful for the values Myers Anderson imparted to him. He saw that his grandfather had been right, and that far from being the “Uncle Tom” radicals would have called him, Myers, in his rough country way, had given Clarence the key to a life of integrity, despite the injustices he would have to endure as a black man.

Myers Anderson no doubt never thought of himself as any kind of right-winger, but he was a natural conservative, the kind of conservative that my own country-born father would have understood and admired. I would learn much later in life that my dad had suffered some hurtful injustices, not from the state or society at large, but from some members of his own family. I didn’t know the fullest extent of this until the final years of my father’s life, after he had had to watch his beloved daughter die from cancer. Nobody gets out of this life untouched by pain and suffering. My father never, ever felt sorry for himself, or if he did, he didn’t let it show. He could be a hard man too, and made some unjust decisions, and treated others unfairly at times. What can I say, he was a man?

One of the greatest gifts he gave me was a sense that in a just world, people should be rewarded for working hard and living by a code of honor that included self-discipline. I’ve written at length about my dad, both the good and the bad in his character, but the things that caused division between us (aside from my own faults, I mean) usually had to do with him not living up to the code he taught me.

My dad did not live to vote in the 2016 election. I’m sure he would have voted for Donald Trump, or an old yellow dog so long as it was Republican. But boy, I bet if he were alive today, he would have nothing but contempt for Trump. I can hear the words my dad used to describe men like Trump: “That’s a sorry sapsucker right there.” Sorry — the word has such deep resonance among Southern people like us. It carries with it a sense of shiftlessness, of weakness, and of being thoroughly contemptible. A man who is sorry doesn’t merit respect, even the kind of respect you would give to a bad man who was at least brave. A thief who had honor would still be no damn good, but he wouldn’t be sorry, if you follow me. It implies a  lack of character that is near total.

Trump is sorry. If you didn’t know it before, the end of that Chris Wallace interview makes it undeniable. Character is destiny. He will leave the presidency, and the country, a sorrier place than he found it when the American people elevated him to the highest office in the land. The character defects of Hillary Clinton (to say nothing of her sorry husband) do not erase that fact, and it’s a sorry thing, by now, to fall back on that as an excuse for this whining no-count bum, who wouldn’t be fit to pump gas in Myers Anderson’s delivery truck. If I were a kid in college now, and thought that Donald Trump and what he stood for was conservatism, I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with it either. It would have nothing to do with policy, and everything to do with character. As Levin points out, Trump had opportunities to get things done, but he was so preoccupied with his own resentments that he destroyed himself and his presidency. Nixon did this too, in his second term, but that was tragedy. With Trump, it’s trashy farce.

I saw on Twitter tonight this screenshot of the letter that George H.W. Bush left on the president’s desk for Bill Clinton gives us a stark idea of how far we have fallen, and a sense of the rubble out of which we on the Right are going to have to rebuild when he’s gone:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/donald-trump-chris-wallace-sorry/

 

Sorry in this Deep South sense of the word is the best descriptor I've heard to date of this unworthy incompetent in the White House.  The GOP has done untold damage to itself supporting him that I think will take at least 10-15 years to dig themselves out of, if they are lucky.  The white evangelical church in the US has all but gutted its witness in this culture for the better part of a generation - barring a complete about face and demonstrable repentance for their stunning and hypocritical act of political idolatry in supporting this sorry individual.  There are one off exceptions here and there doing the work of the kingdom and not kissing Trump's ring, but even they will get stained by the overspray from the church's support of this sorry man through no fault of their own.

[TitanTiger 20,483]

A side note.  This tweet from Rod Dreher is also a perfect analysis of Trump:

"Donald Trump has a special kind of magic: he is uniquely skilled at stirring up the left-wing hornet's nest, and uniquely incompetent at doing anything about it. The reason he cannot master the Left is that he cannot master himself."

[homersapien 11,379]

My father was conservative.  He wasn't well educated (Graduated high school with a GED while in the army, and I think he sent the paperwork to a girl friend to do.)

But he was also a thinking man. And very well-read.  He rose to a very high position in the Bell telephone company. (This was before a college degree was required.)

He was a good judge of character and stood up for blacks who were just then beginning to be employed in the company. (Once a restaurant refused to accept a single black man in his otherwise  all-white crew and he told him you serve all of us or none of us and then took them to a different place.)

There is no doubt in my mind he would have seen Trump for what he is - a "sorry" excuse for a man. 

I often wish my father was still around - along with my father-in-law.  Both would have been appalled by Trump.

[McLoofus 35,182]

5 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

Asked to reflect on his term so far as he seeks re-election, the president’s answer is that he was treated unfairly. Even when he is literally invited by his interviewer to say good things about himself, all he can reach for is resentment.

I wish there was a word for precipitation made of water in a frozen state, destined to fall to the ground and eventually return back to liquid form as soon as the temperature rises above 32 degrees. 

[TitanTiger 20,483]

Ross Douthat has similar observations:

 

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Can Trump Come Back?

Not under his own power. Only events can save him now.

By Ross Douthat

July 21, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET

Here is what Donald Trump can realistically do to right his poll numbers, regain his lost supporters and make the 2020 presidential race close instead of a 10-point Joe Biden blowout.

(voice drops to a whisper)

Nothing.

The word “realistically” is crucial here. On paper, Trump is president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, possessed of all the advantages of incumbency and all the powers of his office. In theory he could initiate, tomorrow, a new nationwide anti-Covid-19 effort aimed at full suppression of the coronavirus, which if successful could have the economy running hot again by Election Day. In theory he could do many other things as well: barnstorm the country giving eloquent speeches on the American idea and racial reconciliation, launch a dozen clever policy gambits to wrong-foot the Democrats, cruise into Hong Kong’s harbor with a “Free Xinjiang” banner hanging from the presidential yacht.

But realistically one need only watch his Sunday interview with Chris Wallace to see that the president is still the man that he has spent his entire life becoming: a character out of C.S. Lewis’s “The Great Divorce,” in which the narrator visits a gray suburb of hell and finds it populated by souls who are self-imprisoned, incapable of freedom, their personalities reduced to grievances and grumbles. A couple of inhabitants go in search of Napoleon, who has “built himself a huge house all in the Empire style — rows of windows flaming with light,” and inside all he does is pace:

“Walking up and down — up and down all the time — left-right, left-right — never stopping for a moment. The two chaps watched him for about a year and he never rested. And muttering to himself all the time. ‘It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English.’ Like that all the time. Never stopped for a moment. A little, fat man and he looked kind of tired. But he didn’t seem able to stop it.”

This is Trump as his first term as president concludes. At least 140,000 Americans are dead in a still-burning pandemic, the unemployment rate is 11 percent, and when asked by Wallace how his presidency will be remembered, all he offered was the old pre-Covid litany of grievance, starting with “I think I was very unfairly treated” and continuing for paragraphs in the same self-pitying vein.

So let’s be real: There is no strategy that this president could adopt, no policy choice that he could make, no tweet of himself in a mask that he could issue, that would fundamentally alter his political position. Trump is incapable of normal presidential action, and even if his aides and handlers concocted such a strategy, the man in charge would make sure it would fail. A new suppression program? A vision for economic recovery? Forget it. “It was the media’s fault. It was NeverTrump’s fault. It was Obama’s fault. It was the fault of Robert Mueller. It was the fault of Jeff Sessions. …”

But that doesn’t make his defeat inevitable. It only means that to speculate about a Trump comeback is to necessarily speculate about possibilities that are outside the president’s control.

Some of these possibilities are outside the realm of easy pundit extrapolation, too. (None of last year’s 2020 punditry predicted the pandemic.) But if we just stick with the two most important issues of the moment, the coronavirus and the protests and unrest in American cities, we can imagine that Trump might benefit politically if the first gets suddenly better and the second gets much worse.

This president isn’t going to suppress the pandemic, so he needs it to do what he keeps suggesting, wistfully, that it might do, and simply go away. That’s unlikely, but it’s not quite impossible. Sweden, ground zero for the quest for herd immunity, has seen its caseload decline and its death rate fall without having reached the terrifying fatality rates that you would expect if the virus needed to infect 70 percent of society before burning itself out. New York, our nightmare state three months ago, has partly reopened (and hosted major protests!) while keeping its death curve flat.

Both of these case studies are modest evidence for the theory that herd immunity for this virus starts to kick in once around 20 percent of a population is infected, not 60 or 70 percent.

The Atlantic’s James Hamblin had a good write-up of these speculations recently: The idea is basically that if there’s a wide variation in susceptibility to a disease, and the sickness burns through most of the high-susceptibility targets in its first big sweep, subsequent sweeps will be much slower, and their case rates and death rates far lower than in a scenario where most people have roughly similar susceptibility. Which could — could — be what we’re seeing in New York and some of the formerly hardest-hit European countries now.

More likely, herd immunity is somewhere above 20 percent and below 70 percent, in the vast space between the most-hopeful and the worst-case possibilities.

But the 20 percent scenario offers Trump’s best hope for an autumn comeback. It would mean that this summer’s surges need not be replicated in the fall, and that by the time Election Day arrives there could be a feeling of normalization, a recovery of growth, even a safe reopening of schools, that right now seems altogether out of reach.

Note that I’m not saying this would save Trump, just that it would clearly help him on a scale far beyond anything he can do himself. At the very least it would help solve one of his leading political problems, which is that a certain number of Republican-leaning voters feel straightforwardly afraid to vote for him again, lest the United States end up stuck in its current viral agony for months or years to come.

But then there still remains the difficulty that not enough Americans are afraid to vote for Joe Biden, notwithstanding the Trump campaign’s attempt to brand him as the candidate of Antifa. For this to change, the threat of crime and disorder would need to become much more palpable to the suburban voters who have abandoned Trump, so that he ceases to look like a goon overreacting to peaceful protests and begins to look like the hard man for hard times he imagines himself to be. And Biden, who right now doesn’t have to do much more than speak about race and crime in comforting platitudes, would need to find himself a bit more squeezed, between the activist wing of his party and the “racism is terrible but so is crime” voters who are giving him his current lead.

More violence is entirely possible, with the steady worsening of homicide rates in many cities probably a more important indicator than the mobs at statues or at Amazon stores. There is a lot of late-1960s naïveté at work in progressive politics right now, and the basic sympathy a majority of Americans feel for the protests and the Black Lives Matters movement might not survive a 1970s-style degradation of public safety.

But a degradation that happens fast enough to doom a candidate like Biden seems even more unlikely than the “early herd immunity” possibility.

First, because the way Americans live now means that swing voters in the suburbs are a lot more buffered from urban crime than were white-ethnic swing voters in the 1970s, and the liberal gentrifiers who feel unsafe when crime spikes in Chicago or Washington D.C. are extremely unlikely to vote for any Republican, let alone for Trump.

Second, because Trump’s own overreactions, in Lafayette Park especially, have locked in an image of him as an instigator in his own right, an arsonist in the White House whose presence there can only make matters that much worse. Maybe there is a threshold of violence where this image changes and his instigation starts to look like necessary toughness. But it’s also possible that Trump’s incapacities now extend to an inability to ever look like the law-and-order candidate, no matter how many times he tweets the phrase.

Finally, because if Trump gets lucky and gets the first form of help he needs, the earlier-than-expected coronavirus herd immunity, it’s likely that the subsequent normalization will have a calming effect on urban unrest, pulling people off the streets and turning down political temperatures at the moment when literal temperatures begin to fall as well. A scenario where the virus goes away but the suburbs feel more besieged than they do right now seems like one of the least likely combinations one could conjure.

So having set out to imagine two possibilities that could help make this a much closer race, at best I’ve imagined one and a half. Which doesn’t mean, again, that there aren’t other, wilder ones. But the exercise has clarified the limits of my own imagination: Even when I’m waxing speculative, I have a hard time imagining a plausible November in which Donald Trump can win.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/opinion/trump-polls-election-2020.html

 

 

[McLoofus 35,182]

14 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

an arsonist in the White House whose presence there can only make matters that much worse

 

[AUDub 11,149]

3 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

But realistically one need only watch his Sunday interview with Chris Wallace to see that the president is still the man that he has spent his entire life becoming: a character out of C.S. Lewis’s “The Great Divorce,” in which the narrator visits a gray suburb of hell and finds it populated by souls who are self-imprisoned, incapable of freedom, their personalities reduced to grievances and grumbles.

That's a good comparison. 

Good op-ed. I often disagree with Douthat - for obvious reasons - but he comes off as thoughtful and is good at putting his thoughts on paper. 

[TitanTiger 20,483]

3 minutes ago, AUDub said:

That's a good comparison. 

Good op-ed. I often disagree with Douthat - for obvious reasons - but he comes off as thoughtful and is good at putting his thoughts on paper. 

I loved The Great Divorce analogy.  We read the book for a class at church and I vividly remember the characters he brings up here.  When he started down that line of thought my mind just lit up thinking "Oh my gosh, it's like Lewis was prophesying."

[DKW 86 7,425]

If you read the niece's book, she just verifies what some of us felt about Trump for 3 decades or more. I am not sure Trump actually thought he could win the WH. He was and is still woefully unprepared, inept, unread, untrained, unskilled. We have problems as a nation because of his craziness. 

I still wonder if Trump actually ever wanted the WH. He has at times acted like he never did. One of Levin's points is that he is "choosing" the losers path now. 

And the WH will be just one more devastating failure of this wreck of a man. 

As for some the evangelicals, I cant even look some of them in the eye anymore. I just cant. They sold their souls to the devil for political gain and flushed their testimony for years to come. I left the Republican Party in 2005. I wondered the same about them then. 15 years later, they are just gaining speed sliding backward down the hill. 

[Grumps 3,704]

15 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

 

Sorry in this Deep South sense of the word is the best descriptor I've heard to date of this unworthy incompetent in the White House.  The GOP has done untold damage to itself supporting him that I think will take at least 10-15 years to dig themselves out of, if they are lucky.  The white evangelical church in the US has all but gutted its witness in this culture for the better part of a generation - barring a complete about face and demonstrable repentance for their stunning and hypocritical act of political idolatry in supporting this sorry individual.  There are one off exceptions here and there doing the work of the kingdom and not kissing Trump's ring, but even they will get stained by the overspray from the church's support of this sorry man through no fault of their own.

I think you may be going to the wrong church.

[TitanTiger 20,483]

2 minutes ago, Grumps said:

I think you may be going to the wrong church.

Fortunately, that's not the case.  But Trump disease has infected many others.  And if you don't think the church's witness has been compromised severely by this Trump worship, you need to get out more.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

32 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

Fortunately, that's not the case.  But Trump disease has infected many others.  And if you don't think the church's witness has been compromised severely by this Trump worship, you need to get out more.

So I spoke with my grandfather today.  He's been ill and I wanted to check in on him.  He's in his 80s and is always worried about me because I travel to "dangerous" places like NYC for work a lot, though he's never been there to judge it himself.  He's a man that I deeply love and is one of the most Godly men that I know.  Fought for his country, never complained, etc etc.  So when he said the following to me, I was gob-smacked.

"I wish we could do away with the Constitution so that Trump could do whatever he needs to do."

When I responded that he was calling for a dictatorship, his response was:

"Maybe that's what we need."

 

You're damn right people's witness have been severely hurt by their support for Trump.  But even worse, some are willing to sell out everything this country is supposed to be about in defense of this man.  The demagoguery is becoming more frightening by the day.

[DKW 86 7,425]

TRUMP as Dictator? WTH? The man is incompetent. I have to believe that your GFather is just so fed up with the Fed Govt he just wants to lash out. There are many that feel they have no voice anymore. Trump did correctly diagnose that. Its what got him elected. Now, we have those that would rather go down fighting DC than admit they were/are wrong on Trump. Either way, the populist Republican in 2024 is going to be a strong contender. The base is still mad at DC. They wont change any time soon.

[McLoofus 35,182]

8 hours ago, Brad_ATX said:

So I spoke with my grandfather today.  He's been ill and I wanted to check in on him.  He's in his 80s and is always worried about me because I travel to "dangerous" places like NYC for work a lot, though he's never been there to judge it himself.  He's a man that I deeply love and is one of the most Godly men that I know.  Fought for his country, never complained, etc etc.  So when he said the following to me, I was gob-smacked.

"I wish we could do away with the Constitution so that Trump could do whatever he needs to do."

When I responded that he was calling for a dictatorship, his response was:

"Maybe that's what we need."

 

You're damn right people's witness have been severely hurt by their support for Trump.  But even worse, some are willing to sell out everything this country is supposed to be about in defense of this man.  The demagoguery is becoming more frightening by the day.

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm guessing you might be dealing with some difficult emotions about that.

When I mentioned to my dad a couple years ago that trump was trying to make the media Public Enemy #1, he said, "I'm starting to think he's right." And there was no irony about it at all. He's a retired military officer. The aggressive embrace of fascism by the same people who still tear up when Lee Greenwood plays the encore... well, just what you said. More frightening by the day. 

[1716AU 729]

On 7/21/2020 at 7:08 AM, TitanTiger said:

 

Sorry in this Deep South sense of the word is the best descriptor I've heard to date of this unworthy incompetent in the White House.  The GOP has done untold damage to itself supporting him that I think will take at least 10-15 years to dig themselves out of, if they are lucky.  The white evangelical church in the US has all but gutted its witness in this culture for the better part of a generation - barring a complete about face and demonstrable repentance for their stunning and hypocritical act of political idolatry in supporting this sorry individual.  There are one off exceptions here and there doing the work of the kingdom and not kissing Trump's ring, but even they will get stained by the overspray from the church's support of this sorry man through no fault of their own.

It will be more than a generation. Just ask single women, who are leaving in droves.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

13 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

TRUMP as Dictator? WTH? The man is incompetent. I have to believe that your GFather is just so fed up with the Fed Govt he just wants to lash out. There are many that feel they have no voice anymore. Trump did correctly diagnose that. Its what got him elected. Now, we have those that would rather go down fighting DC than admit they were/are wrong on Trump. Either way, the populist Republican in 2024 is going to be a strong contender. The base is still mad at DC. They wont change any time soon.

No.  My grandfather isn't lashing out.  He's a smart man, but not highly educated.  He worked hard his whole life, but now doesn't get out much and gets his news from whatever Fox tells him.  Everything else is evil and part of Satan's plan.  Add in some slight old Southern racism and voila, you have what my grandfather has turned into.  My grandfather and others in my family really believe that Trump is doing the Lord's work.  And while my grandfather has lost a step mentally (he thinks slower than he used to), he's still going to vote in November.

As for populism, you will see it die a quick death.  History in the U.S. shows that it rises about once a century, but that's it.  Ultimately populism isn't a strong governing philosophy and shows it's weakness during times of crisis.

And you're giving Trump's base far too much credit for its power.  Simply put, it's not large enough to win consistently.  He beat an extremely awful candidate in 2016 that was easy to vote against because people viscerally hated her.  Biden, while vanilla as hell, isn't someone people hate.  He's just there.  The numbers in 2016 and the 2018 midterms tell tell the story.  He won in 2016 due to record low turnout in key states (just look at Wisconsin) and Republican candidates got their asses kicked in 2018 in many places that went for Trump as a backlash against the man.  Those same 2018 voters are pushing the current polls in the Democrats favor as well.

Trump, nor his base, will ever again get such a perfect confluence of events that they received in 2016.

[DKW 86 7,425]

I dont know. I think you are really under estimating the amount of hate for DC. Everyday the Elites get more Wealthy and the Middle Class gets shafted. This cannot go forever. When the rioting over BLM ends, the new riots maybe against how bad DC is doing us. 

I spend a lot of time on the Progressive (NON DNC) side. This is what I got sent yesterday:

Its on my FB wall. Progressives are fed the hell up with supporting the DNC and getting what we openly call a "S*** Sandwich" for a nominee. 

If anyone on here really supports any of that I would be surprised. If most on here allow themselves to cognitively think about that, I would be surprised. 

Close your eyes and vote for Biden...is a fail long term. Progressives get minimum of four but truthfully more like 8-12 years of nothing if we continue to support the DNC Handpicked Candidate. Dont be shocked when we move to a new party. This is not going down well with Progressives. Things are not like in the past. We know we got ****** with the Biden-Sanders Summitt. In short, we got nothing. And all the MSM hoopla cant cover up the Progressives getting served just one more "s*** Sandwich." 

We are completely fed up with DNC "S*** Sandwich" nominees that ignore everything we want. We are tired of not even getting a seat at the DNC Table.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

1 hour ago, DKW 86 said:

I dont know. I think you are really under estimating the amount of hate for DC. Everyday the Elites get more Wealthy and the Middle Class gets shafted. This cannot go forever. When the rioting over BLM ends, the new riots maybe against how bad DC is doing us. 

I spend a lot of time on the Progressive (NON DNC) side. This is what I got sent yesterday:

Its on my FB wall. Progressives are fed the hell up with supporting the DNC and getting what we openly call a "S*** Sandwich" for a nominee. 

If anyone on here really supports any of that I would be surprised. If most on here allow themselves to cognitively think about that, I would be surprised. 

Close your eyes and vote for Biden...is a fail long term. Progressives get minimum of four but truthfully more like 8-12 years of nothing if we continue to support the DNC Handpicked Candidate. Dont be shocked when we move to a new party. This is not going down well with Progressives. Things are not like in the past. We know we got ****** with the Biden-Sanders Summitt. In short, we got nothing. And all the MSM hoopla cant cover up the Progressives getting served just one more "s*** Sandwich." 

We are completely fed up with DNC "S*** Sandwich" nominees that ignore everything we want. We are tired of not even getting a seat at the DNC Table.

Progressives are a small minority in the political community.  Be fed up all you want.  I don't think there's many in the country on any side that is overly happy with D.C.  But your voting bloc as currently situated is minimal on a national scale.  Swift, radical change is not something a majority of Americans have an appetite for and that's been the case for our entire existence as a nation.

As for your list and assertion that some on here wouldn't support things on that list, you're wrong.  I support several, especially the trade deals.  They brought a lot of prosperity to our country.  I'm also against single payer healthcare.  I think a blended option a la Buttigieg is the right way to go.  And add the $15 minimum wage to my list too.  Hillary had it right.  We are overdue for a minimum wage increase, but $15 is too high for a national minimum wage.  If I looked longer, I'm sure there's more I'd likely support as well.

[TitanTiger 20,483]

2 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

I dont know. I think you are really under estimating the amount of hate for DC. Everyday the Elites get more Wealthy and the Middle Class gets shafted. This cannot go forever. When the rioting over BLM ends, the new riots maybe against how bad DC is doing us. 

I spend a lot of time on the Progressive (NON DNC) side. This is what I got sent yesterday:

Its on my FB wall. Progressives are fed the hell up with supporting the DNC and getting what we openly call a "S*** Sandwich" for a nominee. 

If anyone on here really supports any of that I would be surprised. If most on here allow themselves to cognitively think about that, I would be surprised. 

Close your eyes and vote for Biden...is a fail long term. Progressives get minimum of four but truthfully more like 8-12 years of nothing if we continue to support the DNC Handpicked Candidate. Dont be shocked when we move to a new party. This is not going down well with Progressives. Things are not like in the past. We know we got ****** with the Biden-Sanders Summitt. In short, we got nothing. And all the MSM hoopla cant cover up the Progressives getting served just one more "s*** Sandwich." 

We are completely fed up with DNC "S*** Sandwich" nominees that ignore everything we want. We are tired of not even getting a seat at the DNC Table.

I think you're underestimating how bad of a candidate Trump is, especially now that we've seen four years of his bumbling governing abilities.  I think what Trump was to Hillary in terms of a comparison in 2016, Biden is to Trump in 2020.  It doesn't matter to most Democrats and Independents that Biden isn't who they originally wanted.  He isn't Trump (just like Trump wasn't Hillary).  And this year, that will be enough.

[TitanTiger 20,483]

The other thing I'll say is partly to echo what Brad mentioned:  The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is not the majority.  Not even close.  It's vocal, (mostly) young, and energetic.  But it's not the bulk of the party.  And if it's not even the majority of the Democratic Party it goes without saying that it's not where the majority of Americans are.  So you simply can't let that group lead the party around by the nose.  You can hear them out, use some of their ideas, etc., but they can't drive the agenda or the kind of candidate you put in a general election.

[DKW 86 7,425]

Yea, How can the 1%ers survive on what they make today. Maybe the middle class can take up a love offering for them?
I know, lets do away with our healthcare so Bezos can make some more money. BLAH BLAH BLAH

If you think that anyone in DC cares about the American Middle Class, you are stoned. If you think that Corporate DNC cares about you, you have missed it all.  

As for being non-relevant in number of votes, then why is the DNC trying to shame the Progressives into voting for Biden? They dont NEED us, so maybe we should just go ahead and start another party. That's where this is going. I mean they only want us to vote for Biden, take our money, take our time, take what we bring and then...give us a crap sandwich of NOTHING. Dont kid yourselves, we got nothing at the summit and we know it. So, if we are so irrelevant, I will thank you to stop trying to shame us into voting for Biden. You elect that train wreck on your own. 

Politics is a Pay for Play endeavor. You want the votes, then make a deal, otherwise STHU. Progressives seem to have a growing boatload of "I dont care" unless there is a deal. So what happens if, again, enough Progressives stay home, or vote for other parties that the unthinkable happens and Trump wins again? Dont blame anyone but yourselves. Thinking that rational humans are going to just continue to be took advantage of for NOTHING, year after year, after year is crazy. 

[TitanTiger 20,483]

9 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

Yea, How can the 1%ers survive on what they make today. Maybe the middle class can take up a love offering for them?
I know, lets do away with our healthcare so Bezos can make some more money. BLAH BLAH BLAH

If you think that anyone in DC cares about the American Middle Class, you are stoned. If you think that Corporate DNC cares about you, you have missed it all.  

As for being non-relevant in number of votes, then why is the DNC trying to shame the Progressives into voting for Biden? They dont NEED us, so maybe we should just go ahead and start another party. That's where this is going. I mean they only want us to vote for Biden, take our money, take our time, take what we bring and then...give us a crap sandwich of NOTHING. Dont kid yourselves, we got nothing at the summit and we know it. So, if we are so irrelevant, I will thank you to stop trying to shame us into voting for Biden. You elect that train wreck on your own. 

Politics is a Pay for Play endeavor. You want the votes, then make a deal, otherwise STHU. Progressives seem to have a growing boatload of "I dont care" unless there is a deal. So what happens if, again, enough Progressives stay home, or vote for other parties that the unthinkable happens and Trump wins again? Dont blame anyone but yourselves. Thinking that rational humans are going to just continue to be took advantage of for NOTHING, year after year, after year is crazy. 

You're arguing something different than what we're saying.  Every segment of the political spectrum believes that they've got it right, or at least mostly right.  The extreme ends of the spectrum are especially this way.  They are the "true believers" in their political philosophies.  And that's fine.  They might even be right - they way they see things and would govern would be the best, most moral, most effective way to govern.  That's fine to believe that and argue that.

But what we're saying is, those people are not the majority of the voting public - not of Americans in general, nor even of their own political party.  So while you can tell me all day long why a progressive isn't happy with Biden as a candidate, that is not an effective argument for why he's not the right candidate for the DNC to put forward to defeat Trump.  Politics in the real world doesn't operate on the calculus that true believers use.  It's more pragmatist.  Putting forth a "pure" candidate that makes the true believers happy isn't usually a strategy to actually win an election. (See Goldwater, Barry, and also McGovern, George).

[DKW 86 7,425]

4 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

You're arguing something different than what we're saying.  Every segment of the political spectrum believes that they've got it right, or at least mostly right.  The extreme ends of the spectrum are especially this way.  They are the "true believers" in their political philosophies.  And that's fine.  They might even be right - they way they see things and would govern would be the best, most moral, most effective way to govern.  That's fine to believe that and argue that.

But what we're saying is, those people are not the majority of the voting public - not of Americans in general, nor even of their own political party.  So while you can tell me all day long why a progressive isn't happy with Biden as a candidate, that is not an effective argument for why he's not the right candidate for the DNC to put forward to defeat Trump.  Politics in the real world doesn't operate on the calculus that true believers use.  It's more pragmatist.  Putting forth a "pure" candidate that makes the true believers happy isn't usually a strategy to actually win an election. (See Goldwater, Barry, and also McGovern, George).

Wow, you missed it big time. I am not saying anything about the candidate AT ALL. NOTHING.

I am saying politics is a transactional business, If you want them to vote for a candidate that they couldnt care less for, and lets be frank, no one in the nation cares a damn about, then make a deal and give them something for their support. That's all. I never once mentioned anything about a candidate. 

[I_M4_AU 7,848]

3 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

When the rioting over BLM ends, the new riots maybe against how bad DC is doing us. 

What makes you think the *new riots* aren’t already happening?  See Portland and Chicago.  The Portland Mayor showed up last night to the *protests* to support the protestors and was booed and asked to resign.  ANTIFA  doesn’t like anybody.

[TitanTiger 20,483]

2 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

Wow, you missed it big time. I am not saying anything about the candidate AT ALL. NOTHING.

I am saying politics is a transactional business, If you want them to vote for a candidate that they couldnt care less for, and lets be frank, no one in the nation cares a damn about, then make a deal and give them something for their support. That's all. I never once mentioned anything about a candidate. 

Ok.  I guess I misread this paragraph:

Close your eyes and vote for Biden...is a fail long term. Progressives get minimum of four but truthfully more like 8-12 years of nothing if we continue to support the DNC Handpicked Candidate. Dont be shocked when we move to a new party. This is not going down well with Progressives. Things are not like in the past. We know we got ****** with the Biden-Sanders Summitt. In short, we got nothing. And all the MSM hoopla cant cover up the Progressives getting served just one more "s*** Sandwich." 

It came off to me as a suggestion that perhaps progressives shouldn't settle for Biden and either stay home or give their vote to a more suitable candidate.  My bad.