USA Politics

He'd probably get an ego boost out of it. However, he seems incredibly touchy about people criticising him in any shape or form.
 
Brigantium said:
once again he resorted to character assassination of a critic (or indeed anyone or anything that doesn't fit the picture he paints) instead of responding to what she said.
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Actually, he did respond to the substance of her speech. Probably falsely -- he denied making fun of the disabled reporter, when it was pretty obvious to everyone that he totally did -- but he responded nonetheless.
 
By the way, I completely believe the notion that Trump would hire hookers to pee on the bed the Obamas slept in because he hates them. And I find it completely hilarious. Indeed, I'm not totally conviced that the whole Trump presidential bid wasn't just to get revenge on Obama for insulting him at the correspondents' dinner a few years ago.
 
Cornfed Hick said:
Indeed, I'm not totally conviced that the whole Trump presidential bid wasn't just to get revenge on Obama for insulting him at the correspondents' dinner a few years ago.
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Oh, the one where he insulted Trump about the birth certificate then turned around and announced he had Bin Laden killed? That was a pretty epic 24 hours of Obama.
 
Agreed. Not only is it low but it'll ensure Trump wins again in 2020.
 
LooseCannon said:
I'd say that's one of the potential reasons, but it falls far short of being in the top 10.
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That's a reach. It's easily in the Top 10, if not Top 5. It's certainly not the premier reason, anti-establishment sentiment caused by perceived negligence of working class people is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else, but it's Top 5 imo.
 
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The Flash said:
It's certainly not the premier reason, anti-establishment sentiment caused by perceived negligence of working class people is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else, but it's Top 5 imo.
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1. Anti-establishmentism
2. Hillary campaign unable to realize they need to compete in the Rust Belt
3. Comey letter
4. Media fawning on Trump
5. Hillary herself being so disliked
6. Hillary campaign deciding not to articulate an in depth economic plan
7. Constant polling of Hillary in the lead causes low-intensity Hillary voters to stay home, assuming she will win
8. Constant polling of Hillary in the lead causes undecided voters to break to Trump as a protest, assuming Trump won't win
9. Trump himself recognizing an underserved demographic in the Rust Belt and targeting it with his populist message

That's off the top of my head. I don't think the whiny twitter attitude of liberals caused Joe Smith in Grand Rapids to vote for the first time since 1984.
 
See, a lot of the things you mention directly fall under "anti-establishmentism", and I suspected that would be the case. Media fawning on Trump (Media controlled by the establishment), Hillary being disliked (Hillary being a leading figure of the establishment), even the Rust Belt issue (Trade agreements and outsourcing of jobs are establishment policies).

If you use the umbrella, the alienating behaviour of liberals certainly makes the Top 5. This rings especially true among the educated conversatives that voted for Trump.
 
LooseCannon said:
Comey letter.
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Was the tipping point for sure. The problem is it should've never been close enough for something like that to flip the election on such short notice in the first place. I'm more interested in reasons why Donald was a serious contender to begin with.
 
bearfan said:
Email server
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Sure, that's part of it. But the Comey letter - violating established and well-maintained practices - certainly hurt Hillary at a dangerous point for her candidacy. A better candidate would never have had that problem, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Comey's ultimately unnecessary comment on the emails found on Weiner's weiner-distributing computer wasn't independently a factor in her demise. Rightly or wrongly, the email server problem had died down by the point Comey brought it back to the forefront, despite Trump's best efforts to use it to paint Hillary as incompetent and criminal. The release of the Comey letter had the sole impact of changing an electoral race, and according to longstanding US tradition, that's wrong.

The Flash said:
See, a lot of the things you mention directly fall under "anti-establishmentism", and I suspected that would be the case.
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Finally have time to get to this. No, they don't. The fact that the Rust Belt was motivated against the establishment certainly falls into this area, which is why I didn't mention it. What I specifically said was that 1. Hillary failed to notice this, a decidedly political error, and 2. Trump specifically noticed this, a political revelation. The fact that a political amateur was able to discover the fact that a trend existed while a career expert politician completely pretended it didn't are entirely political errors. If Hillary had noted the anti-establishment wave going on and addressed it fairly early on, she likely would have held onto the three states that became critical to her electoral chances, even with all the other things going on. Similarly, if Trump hadn't noticed, he couldn't have won. So while perhaps they are related to the anti-establishment attitudes of American whites, insofar as they couldn't have occurred if those attitudes didn't exist, they are not foregone conclusions drawn by the existence of the anti-establishment feelings in those regions.

Hillary being disliked is also not necessarily an anti-establishment issue. The woman withstood a historic campaign by Republicans lasting from 1992 until 2017 to paint her as unelectable, aloof, emotionless, shrill, etc. That's 25 years of constant negative attacks, dog whistles, etc. That has nothing to do with anti-establishment feelings. Similarly, her own myriad of mistakes, such as her email server, have nothing to do with anti-establishment feelings. Hillary as a member of the establishment is, at best, a third of the reasons why her popularity was low - and so it really doesn't fall under the same umbrella either. There's too much going on from when she and her husband represented an injection of southern common sense into the establishment up until it was decided that she represented the status quo.

Finally, there's Trump and the media. We have to appreciate that Trump is a master of modern soundbyte creation. This guy has figured out that it doesn't matter what you say, because the media will edit out your blather and your bullshit as long as you deliver a hell of a soundbyte. Sarah Palin was the original in this - she can talk for hours and hours and literally say nothing of substance. Even her books are completely devoid of content, pages and pages of windbag nonsense. But then she lands one solid line partway through - pal around with terrorists, or lipstick on a pig - and the media can't stop covering it. Trump's the same. He rambles on mindlessly and then lands on a solid line - build a wall, lock her up, etc. And that's what people take away from it. The media ran Trump because he got ratings, and they forgot to do their jobs and critically evaluate the Trump candidacy - until it was too late. The media forgetting they have a job to do certainly has nothing to do with some Americans having anti-establishment feelings.
 
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