Why Trump is (a bit) like Hamas – politicalbetting.com
Why Trump is (a bit) like Hamas – politicalbetting.com
This comparison will offend some of you, sorry. Also, if you are a supporter of either Trump or Hamas, maybe skip reading this.
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Which is one of emotion rather than policy.
Actually this is often asked, in fact obsessively by some. I've lost track of the number of documentaries I've seen and articles I've read where a condescending journalist visits a rust belt city to ask ordinary people how they can be so stupid as to vote for someone the journalist disagrees with - we had a fair few similar in this country after we voted Leave. Biden's whole economic policy, in restoring "good union jobs" through intervention, subsidies and protectionism, however flawed, can be seen as an attempt to bribe the white working class back into the Democratic fold that they have been fleeing since the 1960s.
It clearly hasn't worked, either because it hasn't been done sufficiently, because it is completely impratical and counter-productive, or imo because the causes of the alienation of the WWC are mostly cultural rather than economic, but to say that this question is never asked is quite wrong.
Here's a long thread looking at the implications of Trump's suggested solution.
Kevin raises an interesting point about how tariffs can be used to protect American intellectual property. Let's run through how this would work in the clothing industry. ..
https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/1847477200645451921
It's the human condition to often want to contradictory things. For my job to be stable, protected and well-paid, whist the stuff I buy is cheap. Homes for me and mine, but protecting the green belt. Freedom for me to go around as I please, but control of others. To have my cake, eat it and then get my cake back (by taking theirs).
Write it down like that, and the flaw becomes obvious. As it does when the Israeli government acts to eradicate people from land that is reasonably theirs. Which is why it rarely is written down like that.
"What would the world be like if everyone acted that way?" strikes me as an excellent question, especially when coupled with "what makes you think you will always be on the winning side?" Populism, it seems to me, rests on ignoring that question. Perhaps it's a set of painful consequences that society has to go through every few generations. Though I'd rather not be around when it does.
Not a good look when you are 78 and asking people to give you the biggest - and toughest - elected position in the world. One the previous winner isn't fit to continue doing for the same reason.
Of course, that "exhaustion" might be a euphamism for an end-of-life brain exhaustion. An exhaustion from which there is no recovering. An exhaustion that - on the evidence in front of us - is rapidly delivering us Lord Gaga.
And if he still wins, gives us the 25th Amendment and President. And Project 2025. Hurrah say...well, only the big money backers of Project 2025.
The final two and a half weeks of the campaign should be given over to this discussion. Why is Trump the only candidate in modern history who has refused to make his medical records available? (Interesting side story on his records from 2016 being the subject of much tittle-tattle that he probably dictated the record himself...)
If there is any serious discussion of his cognitive decline, then there are no votes added for Trump. Only losses. This discussion might go on anyway - Harris has the footsoldiers and phonebankers to make it a narrative. If the mainstream media don't want to discuss it, it is because they are happy to be governed by a clown with a flamethrower.
Who in the end, is just a guy with a flamethrower.
I guess when I think about politicians asking that question I really mean to include the idea that the politicians then implement a solution that makes a material difference to the lives of the white working class.
So yes, there has been some rhetoric, but it has not been implemented well enough to create enough decent jobs to blunt Trump's appeal.
I'm not feeling this header.
At age 78 he's the fittest man alive (he says)
How does that work, exactly?
I think the question should really be: how has Trump, a rich man who offers no practical solutions to their problems, managed to connect emotionally to a large number of the economically troubled, and the Democrats, who have started to offer practical solutions, haven't.
Now that is an interesting question.
I also agree that, more so than many of the other Presidents around him, Biden got this and was trying to make changes to industrial policy.
But until Trump's opponents are bold enough to make changes that visibly transform the flyover states, Trump's bold but bonkers solutions (and scapegoating of others such as migrants) will always have appeal.
And the problem of impending death is one to which politics doesn't have an answer, except as something to talk about and take our minds off the subject.
If Trump and Vance lose I doubt he runs again, he will be too old and GOP voters will either look for a more centrist candidate like Haley or evangelicals will conclude he wasn't hardline on abortion enough and look for a more socially conservative candidate like DeSantis or Pence
EDIT: In that sense Trump is exactly like Hamas. Hamas offer no solutions for the Palestinians, they just hate Jews
America has plenty of decent jobs - of course not everybody has one, but enough exist that they can't by themselves explain how 80 million people will probably vote Trump in a fortnight.
Trump's appeal is cultural, not economic. It's partly due to the ghastly celebrity-social media-reality TV world we have moved towards in the last couple of decades, and partly because white America's way of life has been under attack in many ways since the 1960s. White, Christian male supremacy, unthinking patriotism, heteronormativity, and similar have been questioned and undermined by liberal politicians, and Trump is the inevitable backlash. In addition, many of the decisions have been taken in the courts, so they have no democratic legitimacy, unlike, say, our vote to leave the EU.
The Democrats can't really address those concerns without fracturing their own coalition, many of whom have of course benefited hugely from those policies. And, unlike economics, where you can often fudge and bribe individual groups, it is much more difficult to compromise when people frame issues as binary moral choices.
That's the main reason why Trump may well win in a couple of weeks. Economics may exacerbate discontent, but it is a much more marginal cause than many would like to believe.
So yes, it is possible to have health problems / not be fit enough at a young age, but be much fitter at an older age. I don't think that's massively uncommon either, with people who were unfit as children or teenagers finding an activity they like/ can do when they are older.
Not golf, though...
1) It’s a change election, but she is tied to the previous administration
2) The Dems are being asked to provide sensible moderate option, when their background is more radical
One of the interesting developments in politics in the last 20 years is how the left became conservative and the right became radical.
This isn't remotely the situation Trump is in.
I agree yours is a good question, and I think the answer lies partly in the general mistrust of politicians. Biden has made some progress with practical solutions but unless and until a potential Trump voter feels the material difference to their own life, statistics on improvements nationally won't move them much because many won't really trust them.
Of course that mistrust can then be manipulated further - cf Trump's blatant lies about his own record on jobs and employment.
"America has been weakened by Liberals. I will make it Great and Strong again"
Whether Vance can pick up the smouldering embers of MAGA is questionable. With Trump beaten, we may see a rebuilding of the Republican Party. Whether the rebuild can prise the loonier end of MAGA back will partly depend upon how much Marxism Harris has delivered. It probably won't happen by 2028 anyway. A new formal MAGA Party might get funded by MUSK, splitting the American right for a couple of elections beyond that. By which time for example the composition of the Supreme Court will look very different. Rowe v Wade will be reinstated - with safeguards - in a way that takes it out of politics. Possibly even the right to bear arms will have reduced the types of arms that can be borne - and where.
We might return to an era when elections in the US are decided by the economy, stupid.
Specimen: the skipfire that is my neighbourhood Facebook page is perpetually moaning about the state of the roads, yet when the council blocked a stretch of one of the main routes that bound our locale to resurface it, the rage posting went up several notches because the same fkkrs were inconvenienced for a week. Pretty sure no one under 35 was doing the moaning as these poor sods have to spend a shitload on rented accommodation and can’t afford to run a car (and they’d likely not be on FB anyway).
It's not really clear that the Israeli government even tries to gain support from Palestinians. They should have learned by now the lesson of Machiavelli:
It'd be interesting, as well as hopeful, to see how the youngest adult generation's perspective might change if things became a lot better (say, houses becoming affordable).
Some Labour Party staffers are campaigning for Harris. They are volunteers. This has happened in previous elections and with other parties.
The Supreme Court killing Roe v Wade was "legitimate" cos Trump appointed them...
We know why he shouldn't be doing so well, but he is.
So, why?
While not disagreeing with many points in here, the Israelis withdrew from Gaza almost twenty years ago - roughly half the population of Gaza wasn’t even born then. The settler colonisation is in the Fatah-controlled West Bank.
My tentative answer in both cases is a feeling of powerlessness. Americans in the flyover states see a country where the media, the money, the humour and pretty much everything else is dominated by the east and west coasts. They are ignored and so are their interests. Trump claims to be running against this elite so they follow him. They want to go back to a largely mythical time when all of America counted.
For the Palestinians the way they have been treated is far crueller than anything that has happened to the flyover states of the US. Hamas try to strike back against their oppressors. They are not particularly good at it and the price paid for their actions by other Palestinians is horrendous but at least they try to do something.
Neither of these answers is particularly satisfactory. Any casual examination of what policies Trump has, such as high tariffs, should make it obvious that this would make things more expensive for the residents of the flyover states and do nothing for their welfare. Anyone looking at the horror that is Gaza would see the consequences of Hamas's plans. But if you are desperate, truly desperate, then something just might seem better than nothing. It is a modest strike against the powers that be but just maybe it stops you being taken for granted.
How should the likes of Harris respond? She needs to show that she cares. Biden has had a pretty good record in this respect and she is trying to build on it. Israel needs to think what they are offering Palestinians going forward and to be constructive. Both will find this a challenge.
Endless stories about what Farage had said and done in the past would then largely prove politically ineffective in that campaign.
The problem we have is an unbridled media where absolute and unquestionable lies are left absolutely unquestioned. Newsmax just repeating Trump fiction. Jesse Watters seeing a statesmanlike performance when the rest of us see a Trump train wreck, and vice versa with Harris. Even the serious, relatively non-partisans are at it, the Washington Post fact checking Harris whilst not bothering with Trump, presumably on the expectations that every word uttered is 24 carat bullshine.
Fifty percent of US voters are gullible and whereas Biden was vilified on TV for combining genuine short term illness (probably COVID) alongside some of the age related symptoms associated with a high functioning octogenarian, Trump on the other hand is perfectly entitled to talk in utter gibberish and crap his pants without comment.
As posted upthread, lots of people would vote for Nigel Fucking Farage cos "he hates the same people I do", like Cherie Blair
b. Racism is popular.
You had the exact same scenario when the combatants were Corbyn and Johnson. A choice between the unelectable and the unpalatable. Either way one knew it would end in tears, but there was a least a hope with Johnson that he wasn't as bad as we thought. Farage doesn't enjoy that luxury. We all know he's a ****. That is not to say if he conjures up enough snake oil we won't buy it.
1) He's charismatic and genuinely funny
2) He sounds authentic. The magic ingredient is just to lie a lot and not care if you get caught out but it makes him sound different to other politicians who are constantly hedging everything with caveats to make sure they don't say something provably false.
3) People think he's good at the economy because he played a successful businessman on TV
4) He runs to the centre a lot, which his base let him do because he's very aggressive on the partisan axis to make up for his lack of conformity on the left-right axis. For example he ran on protecting social security, and he's letting the courts do the work on abortion instead of taking anti-abortion positions himself.
5) He's very talented at manipulating the media. He's not as good at this as he used to be but basically he can set the news agenda to any subject he likes by saying something outrageous and they'll chase after it like a cat following a laser pointer.
6) Relatedly (and this ability is also in decline) he's kind of a memetic idiot savant. He's really good at saying memorable, catchy things. They're often weird and people make fun of him, but you remember them.
7) The US is pretty polarized and the electoral college leans GOP so just being the Republican nominee gets you a good shot of winning the presidency.
Finally in this campaign he has the advantage that the voters got really mad about the post-covid inflation. This happened all over the world and pretty much every single incumbent is getting kicked around by the electorate.
Similarly you get people in this country yearning after some mythic version of 1960s textile mills and coal mines.
The reality is that the low skilled have always had difficult lives and always will.
The only variants being how much wealth they were born into and how willing their country has been to subsidise them through welfare and public services.
The way to get on has always been to improve your skillset so that you can get a higher skilled job with higher pay.
On the US… Trump hasn’t won just because of flyover states. Trump gets tens of millions of votes on the east and west coasts. He’s won with east coast states in the South. His biggest electoral vote wins in 2016 were Florida and Texas.
Brexit voters hate foreigners. Nige campaigned on hating foreigners. Won the vote
The only rational explanation is 50% of Americans are stupid and that just can't be true.
Trump is racist. He is running a racist campaign. Pretending that’s not happening is just bizarre.
Others are entirely cynical, like Ann Coulter. Nobody gets to edit the Michigan Law Review by being stupid.
And there are similar elements who vote for other parties but have their own hate lists.
Blaming others is preferable to blaming yourself and easier than changing your own life for the better.
I am Peter the Punter, and I approve your message.
Nearly none of the miners took the compensation and left the one-industry villages. The sad thing was that it had been government policy since the war to discourage other industry in the mining areas. The civil servants were worried they’d would lose the workforce… In the end they needn’t have worried.
Hence the stupidity of Mexico’s new President starting a stupid row with Spain, by demanding an apology for the actions of Cortes.
In politics, very broadly, leftism emphasises cooperation as a fundamental concept; and rightist/populist emphasises competition as a fundamental concept. These are both nice and simple, and of course wrong, being in conflict with human nature and human needs in essential ways.
The entire of centrist politics - and this is why it's so boring and you have to read the Economist and Adam Smith (and his successors) and not the Mail/Socialist Worker to comprehend it at all - is predicated on the problem of weaving an unsteady way through that impossible contradiction.
Catastrophic jobs?
Catastrophic stock market - now at the highest levels ever?
Catastrophic inflation - now well under control.
Biden inherited an America utterly inprepared for Covid - with former President Trump willfully refusing to address its impact. He would rather leave the next guy with the pile of crap - and blame him for it.
History will be very kind to Biden for the way he extricated America from Trump's mess. He leaves office with the economy in a far, far better place than he found it. But hey, if that is your definition of "catastrophe"...
I could understand Trumps support if he had any policies that would help the Average Joe . As it is Trump appeals to the “ its always someone else’s fault “ brigade .
Aswell as the racists and migrant haters .
Thankfully our politics here hasn’t descended to the level of hate and polarization seen in the USA and there are still lines that can’t be crossed if you want to get elected .
Which is perhaps where the comparison with Farage works. Whereas Labour benefited from similar nostalgia for the 90s and new Labour among gen x and older millennials.
The trouble is when the funding was transferred to the accession countries in the 2000s the jobs went with them. One of my customers, a company called Ninkaplast made injection moulded cases for CRT tellies. My guy went in to service our machinery on a Friday afternoon, when he went the next week everything had been moved to East Germany over the weekend, including my machinery. But suggesting there was a distinct plan by the civil servants to manage the local workforce through blunting investment isn't true. It's corporate capitalism wot dun it!
My argument was centred on the fact that since humans and their works are non-linear systems, attempting to impose a perfect set of linear rules will always fail.
The explosion in the size of the ruleset, in various domains, is exactly what happened in experimental contexts, when non-linearity met computer modelling in the 1950s….
Socialism needs to catch up with the maths.
Two factors under represented on the list so far are religion and rural. The US is far more religious, and in a more evangelical way, than we comprehend or are familiar with here. And being rural here is quite different to only having a population of a couple of thousand within 50 miles of you, with that kind of lifestyle it is unsurprising urban modernity grates.
European currencies the day of his victory will be interesting as they’ll tell us how seriously or otherwise the markets take his tariff threats. If he goes ahead with what he’s promised we’re talking global trade depression, given China’s economy is simultaneously buckling under.
Their reasons are available in various articles published in mainstream, non Trumpist media.
At the moment I’m consoling myself by the large female turnout so far and the possibility that too many new voters are being kicked out by overly strict vote screeners .
I don’t think this is a purely US phenomenon. Why did over 40% of voters here opt for Corbyn in 2017? Look at India, electing a virulent ethnic-nationalist government in similar percentages. Or the Turks, nearly 50% voting for the bigoted Erdogan who’s presiding over another bout of hyperinflation, or the Hungarians, or - and this is the one that really gets me - a significant proportion of Georgians still voting for the revolting Putinist traitors of Georgian Dream.
In many cases people vote on personal financial priorities and Trump is promising tax cuts and unicorns.