Donald Trump and US politics

I don't see how Trump didn't have any campaign policies. Build a wall, repeal Obamacare, protect the 2nd amendment, let states decide on issues like cannabis and abortion, law and order, rebuild infrastructure, take care of the vets...

One could certainly criticize that a lot of his plans weren't elaborate enough, but you can't explain complicated policy in a 30 second ad anyway.

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Xavderion wrote:

I don't see how Trump didn't have any campaign policies. Build a wall, repeal Obamacare, protect the 2nd amendment, let states decide on issues like cannabis and abortion, law and order, rebuild infrastructure, take care of the vets...

One could certainly criticize that a lot of his plans weren't elaborate enough, but you can't explain complicated policy in a 30 second ad anyway.

You're right. But fundamentally, it's expected that there be something behind that. If my plan is "rebuild infrastructure", those two words are not enough. You need details, you need explanations on what that means and how you plan to accomplish it. Given the level of detail in his plans, he could have just as easily claimed that he was going to wipe out ISIS and give every American citizen a unicorn. It's not that simple. A campaign goal is not the same thing as a campaign policy. Clinton had actual policies. "Here's what I want to do, here's how I'm going to get it done, here's how I'm going to pay for it, and here's independent analysis showing that yes, in fact, this will work."

How's your unicorn working out for you? Mine chewed up my health insurance card and shat on my floor.

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Laurium wrote:

You sit there in your world, completely convinced you're 100% right about everything as given by your insufferable need to deconstruct everybody's word for word reply and respond.

Bro, I never argued for or against a particular candidate. TF are you talking about?

It has nothing to do with whether an individual pick can or cannot be argued for based on your bitter and butt-hurt arbitrary standards. It has to do with the bigger picture, which you never see or seem to even consider, that speaks to a party with zero power complaining every which way and how maybe that might be negatively perceived by the larger electorate which doesn't tune into politics every second or that doesn't take the bait 100% of the time because of that gospel known as Twitter.

Twitter. Your panties are in a twist because of Twitter.

You think nation-state diplomacy is threatened over Twitter? Imagine if he had an Instagram! For every minute he Periscopes, the Doomsday Clock inches every closer to midnight. I take it all back. Please keep us updated.

You want to claim that democrats are throwing a shitfit over every little thing, and then you list a long list of examples where the shit-fit thrown was entirely justified. I pointed out why. You can say I'm "missing the bigger picture", but here's a bigger picture for you: what the democrats are doing now is a considerably more mild version of what slowly earned the republicans control of every branch of government following their drubbing in 2008. And even then, if you tune in for more than the cliffs notes version, you quickly realize that in this case, we're not talking about blanket obstructionism for obstructionism's sake, we're talking about preventing horribly unqualified, unsuitable people from taking important government jobs.

These are not arbitrary complaints. These are not arbitrary standards. The head of the EPA denying the science behind climate change is kind of a big deal. The head of the department of energy not knowing what the department does is kind of a big deal. You're free to paint them as such, but imagine if Obama had hired a naturopath straight out of high school who believes vaccines are a tool for depopulation to head up the FDA, and you've got a basic idea of where we're at with almost every single one of Trump's cabinet picks.

Of course, the Dittohead set is never going to hear the important reasons why Democrats fought so hard against Betsy DeVos, and they will probably see this as bizarre and unjustifiable obstructionism, or a petty, petulant temper tantrum. If you're willing to be completely dishonest and shitty, then you could easily portray it as such. But then, they're literally never going to hear any good reasons for anything the democrats do. Because they listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and other shitbags who have made a career out of right-wing propaganda. They're stupid because they've been taught to be stupid. What's your excuse?

And yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm right. I welcome you to offer any indication that I'm wrong. Just saying "you think you're so smart" doesn't actually constitute an argument. Neither does just dismissing relevant, significant complaints about Trump's cabinet - things like "doesn't know how to do the job" or "doesn't know what the job entails" or "holds unscientific views that make doing the job well impossible" - as "arbitrary standards". Yeah, I think I'm pretty smart. I also have good reasons and arguments to back up my claims.

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It's cool dude. I'll try catching up to your infinite wisdom. Should I start with the Daily Kos or Media Matters?

Try literally any news network that isn't FOX or Breitbart.

If you think Trump didn't have clear campaign polices before the election then you spent too much time ignoring him (beyond mockery/criticism of the way he makes you feel when he talks) and/or received all of your information from fake news.

Leading up to the vote, Trump released numerous papers on his polices (some are transcribed speeches, some are formal white papers). These are IMO more substantive than anything released by Hillary (not that Hillary needed to release polices, given that she was essentially a known quantity - voting for her would be a vote for the status quo).

Note: I'm not giving a positive or negative opinion about any of Trump's individual polices. The intent is simply to point out that his policy statements were released and contained some specific details, since apparently some people think they didn't exist or were completely devoid of details.



100-day action plan before the vote (Oct 22):
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102316-Contractv02.pdf

Abortion:
https://www.sba-list.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Trump-Letter-on-ProLife-Coalition.pdf

Economy: https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/An_America_First_Economic_Plan-_Winning_The_Global_Competition_.pdf
https://lintvwood.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/donald-trump-economic-plan-outline.pdf
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Trump_Economic_Plan.pdf

Guns:
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Second_Amendment_Rights.pdf

Drugs:
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-addresses-the-drug-epidemic-in-the-united-states

Veterans:
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/America_First_Means_Veterans_First.pdf

Urban renewal:
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Plan_For_Urban_Renewal.pdf

Foreign policy:
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Radical_Islam_Speech.pdf

Immigration:
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Immigration-Reform-Trump.pdf

Wall:
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Pay_for_the_Wall.pdf

Child care:
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/CHILD_CARE_FACT_SHEET.pdf
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Childcare_Reform.pdf

Taxes:
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/trump-tax-reform.pdf

Health care (yes, more details than repeal and replace):
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/HCReformPaper.pdf

There are more. These were all released August, September, October.

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鬼殺し wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I see this lie a lot

If you're going to accuse me of lying, the burden of proof is now on you.

To clarify: although I believe the first people to use this idea were liars, I think the phrase has genuine believability which lends itself well to memetics — yes indeed, a lot of people felt that way — and that the bulk of its spread was therefore due to the misguided rather than the deliberately misguiding. I never meant to label you as the kind of liar who creates the lie... instead, as the sucker who believes it. Still insulting? I'd assume so. But hopefully in a manner more consistent with my intent.

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鬼殺し wrote:

So let's see his presidential campaign policies. I am expecting an *incredibly* flimsy definition of 'policy' here, but if you can show he had a comprehensive set of policies that an opponent could go after, I'll gladly rescind the statement.

See Vhlad for links and rektage.

Just to take one at random, that VA paper you cite is exactly what I said it was - goals, with no actual policies to back them up. There's an extremely bare-bones outline of his "ten-step plan", but even that is laughably bare-bones. The only ones that come close to mattering are, again, goals. Yes, it's nice that you'd like there to be more mental health professionals, but I wasn't aware that you could just snap your fingers and have more people choose this career path. Everyone knows that we need more mental health professionals; you don't get credit for reframing the obvious as a policy goal, then failing to actually provide a reasonable solution to the problem. By comparison, Clinton's plan on the same issue contains actual policy details - not many, but considerably more details than Trump's, and a whole lot less partisan sniping. The exact same thing can be said on the opioid addiction front.

For the sake of fairness, the next item I looked at, Trump's economic plan does have some details. Not much, but there is something there. But does it hold up to even moderate scrutiny? Given that most of it boils down to "Let's cut taxes, and then the economy gets better", no, I don't think one could convincingly state that that is the case. And again, we have to compare that with Clinton's economic plan, which not only had details, but was passed to experts to analyze the effect it would have on the economy, so again, that's just not very impressive.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

But does it hold up to even moderate scrutiny?

The third link had detailed scrutiny from a Harvard Ph.D. in economics and a billionaire equity investor who served under Bill Clinton https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Trump_Economic_Plan.pdf

With respect to the "experts" who analyzed Clinton's plan (Moody's), they've already been proven wrong. Moody predicted the stock market would plummet with Trump. It did the opposite.

Moody's also predicted a downturn longer than the great recession, 7% unemployment, and a housing price collapse.

If after 4 years of Trump Moody's proves to be completely wrong, I'm sure we will still see CNN reporting their doomsday analysis for the next election cycle.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

You want to claim that democrats are throwing a shitfit over every little thing, and then you list a long list of examples where the shit-fit thrown was entirely justified.

Our short conversation started with my initial response to Deathflower, after which you had to chime in because you can't help yourself. That entire thing differentiates Democrats from progressives as I see it. You can't even get that straight, the bare minimum of my blah blah.

Nevertheless, thank you for confirming once more that progressives have been throwing shit-fits non stop.

I did not include a long list of examples. I put together 6 or 7 acronyms; that's some impressive list! The long winded stuff was your doing; it always is.

You really are the king of changing context to fit your wailing. Anybody that doesn't fall in line with your rationale is an idiot, or stupid, or slave to this or that propaganda. Not you. No way.

A final time: it's not about an argument for or against any individual pick based on what you consider to be reasonable. It's about the overall impression this strategy gives off to an important section of the electorate that the DNC has been losing lately.

That's pretty straightforward whether or not you agree. Really doesn't have anything to do with

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

imagine if Obama had hired a naturopath straight out of high school who believes vaccines are a tool for depopulation to head up the FDA"

You need to get a grip.

This will be a whole lot funnier in 4 years when Trump will win his second presidency.

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diablofdb wrote:

This will be a whole lot funnier in 4 years when Trump will win his second presidency.

I'm investing in popcorn futures. =^[.]^=