Platforms will change but party names will remain the same.

you guys really think Rs can't come back from this? they'll act like Trump never existed if it benefits their cause. like Taibbi noted regarding the Iraq War, they'll all pretend they were anti Trump the whole time and the rubes will lap it up because they don't care they just want to

politicians always, ALWAYS say what you want to hear and it will continue to be that way, forever and ever, until it isn't effective. lying and being disingenuous is an incentive because we let it be

Why are you guys engaging someone dumb enough to post this?

Also the GOP doesnt need to come back from Trump. They control almost every level of government and through a bunch of underhanded methods are further and further entrenching themselves even though they haven't received the majority of the votes in any election since like 2010.

c In order to grow intellectually, you have to engage the people with whom you disagree. Don't place yourself in an echo chamber.

I'm sorry that you're in an industry experiencing some issues in the short term, but look beyond tomorrow and consider the fact that you're one very tiny piece of a much larger pie.

Look at what this is doing to China right now. A deal will be reached, and the USA will come out way ahead of where we were going in.

I agree, my dog and I often disagree on dinnertimes and engaging with him on this helped me understand the finer points of Sein und Zeit.

Read Jim Davis and you might realize that dogs are not people.

the thing is, the gop has never really been sane. look at the bush years. an idiotic war that killed hundreds of thousands. massive invasion of ppl privacy and govt monitoring.

after bush, the repubs went straight racism and went hard at muslims putting all of them on watch lists and denigrating them at every turn.

and obv they have always been super against gay/lesbian and in very cruel fashion.

No, I have to engage with people who know worthwhile things that I don't. There are ****loads of people with whom I disagree who have nothing but tired old claptrap I already know to offer. You aren't somehow more knowledgeable or more worthwhile just because you disagree with me. Likewise, it is not the case that people disagree with you because they don't know what you know. As I'm sure your 2018 join date is legit, you might consider that people here have been doing this for a while, have come across conservative arguments before, and STILL disagree with them.

In this particular case, Inso's proclamation that a trade war will jumpstart the economy is absolute nonsense that no reputable economist and no reputable economic theory agrees with. It's 100% his hopes and dreams. Why on earth should I take the time to understand his nonsense when I already know it to be so?

That's not the issue, it's: do you really think a significant number of Trump voters, whipped into a frenzy of authoritarianism for the last 4-8 years, are going to turn out for the ****ing Ben Sasse campaign? A dozen straight years of veering hard right and you think all the Trumpkins are just gonna be like "ok, that was fun, we're all back to reasonable centrism now"?

Like this is so laughably and obviously wrong that I already wrote a portion of my post making fun of this notion before reading that you apparently posted it in total earnestness.

Nobody with half a brain thinks the trade war with China is a long term economic strategy. Its a geopolitical tactic to compel another nation to change their behavior. Trump is essentially sanctioning China for being a bad trading partner. The sanctions will end when the rules of the game by which China and the US play together are changed to be fair to us. Nothing about this is nonsense.

"Bad behavior", "rules of the game". These are doing the heavy lifting for a strategy that was invented by a guy Jared Kushner picked off of Amazon by searching the word China.

As currently structured the GOP has no possible way to pivot and keep their supporters turning out at the insane rate they do presently... and that's the handhold they are clinging to to avoid falling off the cliff. Every year it gets worse/shakier and Trump just obliterated any remaining flexibility they have by telling their hardest core supporters everything they ever wanted to hear.

These people are already highly susceptible to things like conspiracy theories, lies, etc etc. The chance that there isn't a politician sociopathic enough to run the Trump strat in every important GOP primary going forward is close to 0%. Now that the base has tasted Trump they won't go back to Romney/McCain/Bush style candidates.

The issue of course is that 60% and growing of the general population finds this stuff insanely awful. To win the GOP primary going forward you're going to have to go full wingnut... but going full wingnut (esp post Trump) is a losing strategy in general elections.

The end result of all this is that the GOP is going to lose a LOT of elections and power over the next 10 years until the hardcore Trumpkin demo thins out.

The difference between this situation and Bush (who was a lot more unpopular in his second term than Trump is now), is that Trump will not go off quietly into the sunset. If a democrat wins in 2020, the best result for the GOP would be that Trump croaks before 2024. In that scenario, the 2024 playbook is the well known blame-everything-on-the-current-president-and-ignore-that-history-is-longer-than-4-years.

No one is working on this, though. It's a cute justification for the tariffs that you invented, but it has no bearing on reality.

If Trump loses in 2020, no question Trump will scream about the elections being a sham and that millions of people will be gathering at rallies to protest about how the evil Democrats rigged the vote.

It both attempts to placate his ego while simultaneously destroying the notion of democracy as a legitimate form of governing, thus allowing Putin to use America to further strengthen his grip in Russia.

Trump has done and will continue to do irreparable damage to America as he has weakened the walls of democracy and provided a window of opportunity for authoritarianism to flourish.

Huh....its interesting that in the alternative left wing reality you inhabit this trade war is a long term economic strategy. You must have a pretty ****ty existence over there. In the reality I live, people are working on ending this trade war because it was just a tactic to bring China to the table.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/04/polit...lks/index.html

The left wing get the idea just fine. The trouble is that's it's a very dangerous game that, if played at all, requires a command of the detail (and himself) that seems obviously way beyond trump.

Be nice to think there was a competent administration behind him doing the detailed work but that's laughable as well.

I'm not going to argue about the competency of Trump. He has issues in that area. But not everyone on the left gets the idea just fine. MrWookie had/has the mistaken belief that this tradewar with China is itself an economic strategy. I am hoping he is sophisticated enough that after having engaged with someone whose holds different beliefs than him he has grown. I fret though he may be so incredulous that his mistaken belief now morphs into a delusion.

I read this forum because I want to challenge my own beliefs by hearing what other who believe differently than me have to say. In all honesty this politics forum is akin to a big pile of **** with mostly 40 percentilers spewing nonsense, but occasionally, as I wade through the nastiness and hate cultivated here, I come across a kernel of corn.

I mean the left in general i.e It's simply not something that the left have some problem with by virtue of being from the left. I'm not speaking for wookie.

I agree that the left in general gets it. But some of the folks on the left really are living in a different reality than the rest of us.

You’re the one who thinks that Donald Trump has long-term strategies, bub.

You don't grow by engaging with morons.

MrWookie is the one who claimed Trump's tradewar was a long term economic strategy not me. Go ridicule him instead. My claim has been its a tactic to get China to the table.

Anyways does Trump have any long term strategies? That is an interesting question because he does seem like a fly-by-the-pant-seats kinda guy. I guess we first have to decide by what is meant by long term strategy. Does renegotiating the trade agreements with Mexico and Canada qualify as an execution of a long term strategy?