Prayers for the refugee attack in Sweden two nights ago.

[Benton]

(02-19-2017, 10:14 PM)bfine32 Wrote: I think Matt's point is someone should try. To suggest that Trump and his "followers" are not ridiculed just points to bias. If the left doesn't what the White House ever again they can just continue to push back harder. I didn't vote for Trump but if I had known how the left would have reacted to his victory, I would have. I also would have put Trump signs in my yard and worn my MAGA hat to the voting booth. 

Somebody better look for the middle soon, because the Right out numbers the far Left and pushing further left will make their numbers smaller. Their campaign strategy of focusing on Trump instead of the issues didn't work and I don't the post-election strategy of doing the same will have a different effect. 

I dunno.

Before the primaries nearly every projection had Trump beating Clinton in the general, or Sanders beating Trump. Results on the plethora of other GOP candidates versus Clinton or Sanders varied. Your moderate candidates didn't do very well against extreme ends. And despite how she was portrayed, Clinton was very moderate. You could put policies by her, Obama, Rubio and Kasich in a hopper, spin it around and — outside of maybe abortion and tax breaks — you could pin most of the responses on any of the four. You couldn't say the same with Trump, Rand Paul and Sanders.

The conversation right now is that the left needs to move more to the middle if they want to win in 2020. My fear is they're going to look back at those projections and move further left. They'll look at the data and say Clinton wasn't liberal enough to bring out the base. 

Some are saying the Trump candidacy was voter displeasure with the "move left." Except, there wasn't one. Obama was president for two terms, had the chance to pass whatever he wanted and he used it to roll out the Republican healthcare plan. No mandatory abortions. No death squads. No piles of guns melted down, their metal used to build a sculpture of Baal. No Bible burnings.

Yeah, some bipartisan courts ruled in favor letting people pee where it looked like they should, or upheld the executive branch stepping between big corporate and people. But, really, rhetoric aside, there wasn't a lot of difference under Obama than under the last year or two of Bush.

(02-19-2017, 10:30 PM)Bengalzona Wrote:  
Imagine how different our world today would be if the GOP had turned their backs on Nixon earlier rather than later. The Republican leadership of that time might have been hailed as heroes.

That's one of the aspects why I wouldn't take impeachment by 'his' party off the table. Members of Congress are primarily looking out for themselves. They grab as much cash and pass as many laws as they can to make the folks back home (and corporate donors) happy. If Trump is a liability to their reelection, they'll get rid of him. If more and more people continue to show up to town hall meetings and express displeasure over the direction in Washington or Trump's shenanigans, Congress will have bipartisan support in impeachment.