What has happened to the Country (Western Civilization)

My wife just showed me this. Hilarious!

In any society there are people who want an authoritarian in charge. Political promises mean little compared to the burning desire for SOMEONE TO BE IN CHARGE AND GIVE ANSWERS. Doesn't matter if the answers are brilliant or stupid, just tell me I'll be safe and you will sweat the details.

I believe it was 538 blog that said that some polling was showing Trump could potentially pull about as many Democrats as Republicans in the general election in part because authoritarians are in each party in the US in roughly equal numbers and haven't really had a candidate they could embrace. Trump is all over the place on policy matters so he can get some Democrats based on past support of abortion rights and support of healthcare for all.

Trump just doesn't fit the traditional holes of the American political peg board so people can pick and choose whether to like him because he's probably at some point said something you agree with.

Under normal conditions, a Trump doesn't happen. Our campaign process for president is a marathon.
You start with a melee in the nominating process, any person who thinks he or she ought to gain the party nomination can file as a candidate. In the melee process (primaries and caucus voting which travels like a circus around the country in various states on different dates) the biggest battle is name recognition.

In the Republican primary they started out with 12-16 candidates. Of them only three or four were widely known people outside of the circle of people really into politics. Trump's opening salvos were brilliance. Do and say anything to get media attention. He went extreme pretty much across the board and even if you thought walls and mass deportation weren't feasible or sensible, if immigration concerned you, suddenly he's the only candidate saying he will do something about illegal entry without using jargon or political buzzwords. He was your guy. More importantly for Trump, every story about him meant it took up space that traditionally would go to some tedious piece about Joe Schmuck Governor of Whatizit trying to win over voters in Iowa. So the unknowns... remained unknown.

Then he caught a stroke of luck.

Unlike parliamentary countries where people have a variety of parties to choose from and can vote for the party that most reflects their views and if a majority cannot be achieved, coalitions are built where two or more parties band together to govern after a bit of horse trading, in the US our voting system lends itself best to a binary system so parties cobble together their coalitions of voters before elections. Evangelical Christians used to be reliable voters on the Democrat side as did people who wanted a government that supported military interventionism. The Evangelicals moved because they began to regard stopping abortion to be of greater value than supporting social safety nets. The Warhawks pretty much just got pushed out of the Democratic party, so now you have traditional economic conservatives who are historically pretty libertarian on individualism and personal choices, banded together with people who really don't sweat much about the size government and want more intervention in personal behavior regulation. The old isolationist economic conservative Republicans who wanted a strong military that stays the heck out of the affairs of the world are now joined by those who want to spread democracy by force to places that are appropriately easy to deal with. [pardon the background but since I'm responding to someone from the UK I felt sort of have to explain how the foundation was poured]

The stroke of luck was that several of the better recognized candidates happen to be people who are "establishment" friendly. They line up well with the old guard, and generally OK with the social conservatives. Combined they could pull about a third of the vote but once that third is split three or four ways its peanuts. Even though Trump was pulling about a third he got all of it and 1/3rd looks more successful than 1/3rd of 1/3rd.

Now Trump was a front runner.

Barring a strong rally by another contender Trump will be nominated and go from the melee format to the one-on-one and who knows how his style holds up when he is in that arena where historically a bad day means you get only 45% of the political coverage and there aren't multiple targets to engage. He likely faces Hillary Clinton who is basically the only person with unfavorable poll ratings in his neighborhood of unpopularity.

I have three suggestions for my fellow Americans for this election
1. Bourbon
2. Spend more time on watches
3. Endorse political change as I have.

You have a lot of lakes... there must be a strange woman with a sword in one of them.

You may have seen this, but if not, it's cleverly done 😁

What a depressing thread. For you anti-politician and anti-lawyer people: There are three ways to run a country: (1) by a dictatorship; (2) by a more-or-less democratic political process of campaigning, haggling, negotiating, and ultimately finding a path of action likely less than ideal for everyone but at least somewhat acceptable for most; or (3) by the continual threat of violence, actual violence, and frequent outright civil war.
Option no. 2 requires, believe it or not -- politicians! And lawyers, courts and lawsuits, too. In fact, it requires a fully-developed and sophisticiated political and legal system. Option no. 3 results in poverty and suffering on the grandest scale. And as for Option no. 1 -- well, nobody has asked me to be king recently.
The worst thing that has happened in American culture in the past 50 years is the loss of faith in and respect for our political process and system of government. It's gotten to the point where candidates proudly say they are "outside the system" and "above politics" and want to "get government out of our lives"! Consider the implications of Options 1 and 3 before accepting such drivel.
Edit: And please, no more about how our federal Constitution is all about protecting the individual from government overreach and oppression. It mainly was at first, and our country collapsed into a massive Civil War. Federal government power was limited, but there wasn't enough of a political system in place to distribute that power fairly among our various constituencies. Then we added voting rights (never had them before) and basic rights such as equality under the law (didn't have that before either). Eventually we got a real political system going. It isn't a good idea to abandon it now.

Never underestimate the importance of voting rights. A very wealthy few now have far too much control over the American election process. And no surprise, they want to convince us that the political system is no good, because they want to do their thing free from the constraints of that system. And "their thing" is to make themselves wealthier and more powerful. The political system is the one way to force them back.

Truman was born with almost nothing, and had little or no talent as a business entrepreneur, but was a highly effective administrator. Trump was born fabulously wealthy, and has had all the advantages of a top education and everything else wealth and connections provide. Truman was a genius at working within large and cumbersome organizations and making them work efficiently. Maybe Trump is smart enough to hire people like Truman, but given his business record, maybe not.

That's exactly the kind of cynicism that is most dangerous. If you want to make fun of Bill Clinton for his skirt chasing, that's fine, (I frankly prefer the old-fashioned cigar chomping, whiskey slugging, whoring style to today's hypocritical, phony puritanism). But I remember watching in amazement in Virginia when Chuck Robb solemnly announced to a packed press room, "I have always been faithful to my wife and I was a virgin when I married." Yeah. TMI, and of course not remotely true. Turns out he was a hound dog, and it was no big secret, especially not to Lynda, I'm sure, who was LBJ's daughter and no doubt knew all about hound dogs. And he was a 28-year old marine officer and Vietnam veteran when he married her. And a virgin. Right. But his totally irrelevant sex life derailed his presidential chances and helped erode our confidence in national politicians.

Right you are -- it wasn't better, it was worse. Worse before the environmental legislation of the 60s and 70s, worse before the civil rights legislation of the 60s, worse before the financial and securities industry legislation of the 1930s, worse before the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 that reformed the banking system, and much worse before the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution in 1865-70 that gave us voting rights and basic freedoms. And all the laws and regulations that keep those in force We had a much weaker country before all that. 😀

Well, I was trying to say, the more the process is respected, the less room for clowns. And btw, Chuck Robb was shacking up with Miss Virginia USA, not some intern. So if we're going down to that level, I think Robb had Clinton beat.

Nate Silver of 538 blog says the caliber of candidates typically reflects the state of the parties.

As I alluded to in an earlier post the coalitions making up our parties are rather frayed.

On the GOP side most of the coalition has moved on from gay marriage but it remains critical to many evangelicals to have a candidate vowing to tilt at that windmill. Immigration is a big divider with business Republicans uneasy about the calls for limiting legal immigration. The ACA repeal talk gives the willies to pharma and hospitals who used to have reliable allies for tort reform. And I could go on.

The Democratic side gay marriage caused tensions with minority leaders. Hispanics and African-Americans are dividing over the path to opportunity and government's role. A significant number want to toss ACA and pursue Medicare for all. The social safety net remains problematic punishing marriage and having a brutal notch that punishes improved earnings. Defense remains a problem with minorities over-represented in the ranks thus creating tension over deployment but shrinking means cutting off a route to move upward in society not to mention the value of defense contracts to local employment. Tension between unions and aims over education and free trade.

The members of the coalitions making up each party are growing further apart so candidates find it harder and harder to appeal to majority of the party.

It's not the media scrutiny or dirty tricks driving away potential candidates it's the hoops to get the nomination.

President Obama's lack of record was a positive, less record to offend diverse parts of the party. The GOP top three have a combined 5 years of experience in Congress or as an elected office executive.

Take former presumptive GOP nominee Jeb Bush. He and Hillary Clinton could bore us to tears with how they are different but they are more similar than Hillary-Bernie or Jeb was to Cruz or Trump, Rubio is just a bit over from Jeb.

It's time for the parties to realign.