US Politics Thread

[Dax777]

I still reckon within a year or so we’ll hear Trump utter the words “Elon is not a smart man. I barely knew Elon. Not smart”

Very Trump.

It's possible. Powerful men fall out all the time. But I was just amused at those trying their hardest to speed it up. What are they scared of?

 

[Dax777]

Well there's less than a month to go before his inauguration there's nothing left for Nepo Joe to do anymore. Pardons for his allies to prevent retribution from Trump is only job now.

Fair point

 

[Username Required]

U.S. President Joe Biden said he would "of course" attend Donald Trump's presidential inauguration next month, personally confirming his presence and rejecting what he called the Republican's "childish game."

"Of course I am," Biden said in an interview broadcast on Thursday on the Meidas Touch network, when asked if he was planning to attend the Jan. 20 transfer of power.

"The only president ever to avoid an inauguration is the guy that's about to be inaugurated."

lol nice one Joe.

 

[ChicagoBlue]

Who is they in this claim?

The numpties on their way back to DC.

Did it once, will have to do it again!

 

[ChicagoBlue]

Why are we assuming that Trump's agenda is outside the Constitutional mandate. That's an assertion with no proof.

Do you mean “other than the last time he did it…”?

He is kissing the ring or the leader of the party. I'm.amused at Democrats who bemoan Republicans who support the leader of their party.

Same people who called Manchin and Senema traitors are now frothing at the mouth all over TV hoping to find traitors. It's hilarious to watch

Manchin & Sinema knew their positions and tried to leverage them for personal gain. Unseemly…almost Republican!

 

[ChicagoBlue]

Yes! Why even ask? You should have just posted the clip. And then add where he concluded we ought to ban the polio vaccine.

I’m not your news service!

He said there were far more cancer deaths than people saved from polio, so the “cost-benefit” was AGAINST giving the vaccine!

Personally, I’d like to see the evidence that led to his conclusion, too!

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

It isnt that sad in the circumstances. They are a banana republic now, best left to their own destruction without getting dragged into it

It’s sad because it was once the flag bearer for freedom and democracy and now, as you say, it’s like a banana republic.

 

[ChicagoBlue]

CB, again what I take issue with is not what happened ,( i.e. that these pro democracy lovers couldn't even have a simple primary) but rather your assertion that not having a primary**was them making THE hard choice*** as opposed to the Republicans who were cowardly.

My issue is with your framing and understanding of which one was a hard choice.

Your issues are your own. I’ve made my position clear.

A DEI candidate position is a position in that is fielded with a requirement that only a specific group are allowed to apply. That group bses on race or gender or bith

Joe Biden created a DEI Vice Presidency position when he stated before hand that he'd only be considering Women of Color. He did that.

She the person is not a DEI. The position she filled was a DEI position. That's Biden who did that. If you think it's derogatory ethically and misogynistic then you have an issue with the idiot who created the position. Not me or Frank for merely pointing it out what is.

He was talking to the party base and its strongest, most fiercely loyal cohort, black women, who have felt disenfranchised and taken for granted by the party…not simply a DEI Candidate.

Vance is the same candidate, just at the other extreme…White, pseudo-Southern, bible-punching, male, also known as his base.

I won't mind voting for you to be fair. You strike as what many sold us Biden was. A centrist. Partisan but Centrist. I can live with that :)

Flattery will get you everywhere!;-)

Yes, you do know there are thousands of rankings of best American Presidents right? Pray tell which one did you think "the Guardian" will pick from. Certainly not the one that has him.rsnked as 6th best and the best President of the 20th century.

That' said my personal favorite President is never ranked highly. :)

As I said, NOT The Guardian, but Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus were the political scientists behind the survey.

Rottinghaus, of the University of Houston, and Vaughn, from Coastal Carolina University, considered responses from 154 scholars, most connected to the American Political Science Association.

The aim, the authors said, “was to create a ranking of presidential greatness that covered all presidents from George Washington to Joe Biden”, in succession to such lists compiled in 2015 and 2018.

“To do this, we asked respondents to rate each president on a scale of 0-100 for their overall greatness, with 0=failure, 50=average, and 100=great. We then averaged the ratings for each president and ranked them from highest average to lowest.”

At the top of the chart, there was little change from previous surveys – the latter of which also saw Trump, then in office, placed last.

Abraham Lincoln, who won the civil war and ended slavery, was ranked first, ahead of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who saw the US through the Great Depression and the second world war. Next came George Washington, the first president, who won independence from Britain, then Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Harry Truman.

Barack Obama, the first Black president, to whom Biden was vice-president between 2009 and 2017, was seventh, up nine places.
Considering drops for Andrew Jackson (ninth in 2015 to 21st now) and Woodrow Wilson (10th to 15th), Rottinghaus and Vaughn noted the impact of campaigns for racial justice.

“Their reputations have consistently suffered in recent years as modern politics lead scholars to assess their early 19th and 20th century presidencies ever more harshly, especially their unacceptable treatment of marginalised people,” the authors wrote.

Jackson owned enslaved people and presided over the genocidal displacement of Native Americans. Wilson oversaw victory in the first world war and helped set up the League of Nations, but was an avowed racist who segregated the federal workforce.

Other major movers included Ulysses S Grant (17th, up from 26th in 2015), whose administration generated significant corruption but whose attempts to enforce post-civil war Reconstruction in southern states, including fighting the KKK, have helped fuel reconsideration.

Grant succeeded Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor and the first president to be imprached. Like Johnson, Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan, who failed to stop the slide to civil war, also sits higher than Trump on Rottinghaus and Vaughn’s list.

Trump is a uniquely divisive figure, his legislative record slim, his refusal to accept defeat by Biden leading to a deadly attack on Congress, and his post-presidential career dogged by 91 criminal charges arising from actions in office or on the campaign trail.

In the presidential survey, Trump is also ranked behind “such lowlights as Franklin Pierce, Warren Harding and William Henry Harrison, who died a mere 31 days after taking office,” Rottinghaus and Vaughn wrote.

“Trump’s impact goes well beyond his own ranking and Biden’s. Every contemporary Democratic president has moved up in the ranks – Barack Obama (No 7), Bill Clinton (No 12) and even Jimmy Carter (No 22).

“Yes, these presidents had great accomplishments such as expanding healthcare access and working to end conflict in the Middle East, and they have two Nobel prizes among them. But given their shortcomings and failures, their rise seems to be less about reassessments of their administrations than it is a bonus for being neither Trump nor a member of his party.

“Indeed, every modern Republican president has dropped … including the transformational Ronald Reagan (No 16) and George HW Bush (No 19), who led the nation’s last decisive military victory”, the Gulf war of 1991.
Accounting for Democratic climbs and Republican drops, the authors acknowledged that academics tend to lean left but also said, with a nod to Trump: “What these results suggest is not just an added emphasis on a president’s political affiliation, but also the emergence of a president’s fealty to political and institutional norms as a criterion for what makes a president ‘great’.

I'll cover Hunter separately. Let me go moan in the Liverpool transfer forum for a bit.

Enjoy!

 

[mancity2012_eamo]

@mancity2012_eamo the above gives you a better bird's-eye view of American politics than anything Noam.has to say.offer.

I get all that. Chomsky wouldn’t be what I would call a Dem or a Rep.
He’s done a critique of every president and government, your foreign policy and contemporary capitalism and corporate influence on political institutions since the 1960’s.
You should see the interview he did 8 years ago regarding Trump for President.
Astonishingly enough, far from jumping to conclusions about him, although he obviously doesn’t rate him as any sort of thinker, but he was very accurate in a lot of his predictions of where American politics was heading.

I’m taking it, that you don’t rate him much, however.

 

[Dax777]

Do you mean “other than the last time he did it…”?



Manchin & Sinema knew their positions and tried to leverage them for personal gain. Unseemly…almost Republican!

Did what?

What was the thing that they are going to break that we'd have to fix. As for Manchin and Senema acting like senators and applying leverage, what's the news there?