If you think Trump is this grand glorious herald of a new right wing regressive age I’ve got some bad news for you.
You’re a total rube if you expect anything from Trump other than a virtual Obama clone in terms of actual policy and governance.
We’ll see TPP, tax cuts for your owners, and pointless bickering over ultimately meaningless social issues as a distraction.
Trump isn’t POTUS anymore than Obama was. What you should all be saying is: All hail the 12th term of glorious leader Goldman Sachs.
If you seriously think anything is gonna substantively change that wasn’t already going to simply because the White House has an R on it now instead of a D, you haven’t been paying attention to the last 20+ years where since Carter the “democrats” have been republicans in literally all but name and rhetoric.
I hated Clinton more than Trump btw. She was actually dangerous because the one thing a president actually can do unilaterally is wage war. (Which is why Obama was able to take us from two to seven in eight years regardless of anyone else’s opinion.)
The only reason Trump is special is because the media/DNC/RNC the 1% own spent literally billions in cash and air time screaming that lie at you.
Your fantasy of a great right wing regression is just that. The arc of history is as one way as time’s arrow. You’re on the wrong side of global history’s objective arc. Any belief otherwise is as doomed as ISIS’s global caliphate delusions.
History doesn’t go backwards over the long term. That’s why we call it history. XD
Even if nuclear global war happened or a massive asteroid impact it wouldn’t set us back so long as a single bookcase of technical or historical knowledge survived. Let alone a flash drive or a print out of Wikipedia. History ultimately goes in one direction and you’re kidding yourself if you honestly think anything will change that.
But just for some Trump specifics: “Lock her up” turned into forgive and forget. The wall turned into a fence, and then a metaphor. Drain the swamp, turned into Appoint the swamp. Repeal the ACA turned into “it’s not ALL bad.” And that was all before the man was even sworn in.
You got bilked.
The ONLY way he gets to actually change anything (and gain more power) is if he runs with the populist positions that caused Bernie’s rise. Kinda like how he won the rust belt states being an American middle class labor protectionist (in rhetoric at least) EXACTLY like Bernie.
There aren’t any massively popular regressive populist positions left. The right wing already won on all those fronts via neolibs and flat out corruption. There’s no where for Trump to go but center or left. Thus at best for degenerate psychopaths he’ll go center, like every president since Carter.
Maybe he’ll get to go a little right on practically meaningless social issues. (Sorry crazed leftists, but who you get to marry or which sign is on the bathroom you shit in really isn’t important in any real way compared to war and the economy.)
The only reason Trump won is because the DNC cheated the other vastly more popular and capable populist out of his chance to run against Trump and instead installing the ONLY living human he could actually beat. HRC. Nixon/Kissinger in a pantsuit.
Do you even politics?
TV doesn’t count.
From Robert Reich
I had breakfast recently with a friend who’s a former Republican member of Congress. Here’s what he said:
Him: Trump is no Republican. He’s just a big fat ego.
Me: Then why didn’t you speak out against him during the campaign?
Him: You kidding? I was surrounded by Trump voters. I’d have been shot.
Me: So what now? What are your former Republican colleagues going to do?
Him (smirking): They’ll play along for a while.
Me: A while?
Him: They’ll get as much as they want – tax cuts galore, deregulation, military buildup, slash all those poverty programs, and then get to work on Social Security and Medicare – and blame him. And he’s such a fool he’ll want to take credit for everything.
Me: And then what?
Him (laughing): They like Pence.
Me: What do you mean?
Him: Pence is their guy. They all think Trump is out of his mind.
Me: So what?
Him: So the moment Trump does something really dumb – steps over the line – violates the law in a big stupid clumsy way … and you know he will …
Me: They impeach him?
Him: You bet. They pull the trigger.
Robert Bernard Reich is an American political commentator, professor, and author. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997
Yeah, no doubt that’s the plan for a lot of them. Thing is, every second Trump is in office and not brutally fucking up he’s learning how not to brutally fuck up. And even if we do end up with pence that’ll just be an ever harder stomping for them in 2020. If trump’s sly he’ll play centrist populist till year 4 making both sides look like failures by actually doing stuff for the people. And let’s be honest, there’s plenty of good “conservative” stuff he can do.
Hell, just sticking to this pro labor tactic is solid politics, since both the DNC and RNC threw labor overboard and it was protectionist rhetoric that got him elected in the rust belt states. And the right wing is all about telling people to get back to work, so it’ll be damn hard for them to scold Trump for making life better for those that do. The two party system is a huge scam. All he has to do is govern on behalf of the 75% that don’t vote and he’ll probably get a second term.