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The US Presidency 2018

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A 51, 52 or 53% margin of error is pretty weak. Trump won the Presidency with 46% of the popular vote and people are up in arms, but 55% with a 4% margin of error should be enough to condemn him for his conduct in Helsinki??
 
PuckChaser said:
A 51, 52 or 53% margin of error is pretty weak. Trump won the Presidency with 46% of the popular vote and people are up in arms, but 55% with a 4% margin of error should be enough to condemn him for his conduct in Helsinki??
51- percent disapprove, at best, in a vacuum, isn't too bad. 49 might agree with him then, right? 2 point difference, no big deal?

Except we know the approval rating for the summit. it's in the same poll.

32 percent. which +4, to be generous, is 36 percent.

So best case scenario for the President is 51 percent think he did a bad job, 36 percent think he did a good job. Those are horrible numbers, for his best case scenario. Worst case scenario and we are looking at 59 percent think he did a bad job, 28 percent think he did a good job. That's abysmal.

Sourcing your poll that you said was wrong(which we both agree it wasn't) CBS had Clinton with a 4 point lead over The republican candidate, it ended with a 2 point lead. The margin of error was 4 percent. So to dismiss the CBC poll as I believe you are trying to do doesn't quite make sense to me, even using the margin of error to make it seem the most favorable for the president, most people think he did a bad job.
 
>Let's put it this way. Russia was found trying to destabilize American democracy through their cyber assaults. Those activities continue.

At what point since 1945 - perhaps since a time earlier - has Russia not being trying to destabilize American (and other) democracy (by various means)?  At what point was the US not trying to do the same thing, only aimed the other way?

I understand people being excited about Trump's lackwit response to all this (interference, etc).  What I don't get is the level of outrage and excitement about the fact that it (interference, etc) happened.  Did a large fraction of the western world get brainwiped?
 
Brad Sallows said:
. . .
I understand people being excited about Trump's lackwit response to all this (interference, etc).  What I don't get is the level of outrage and excitement about the fact that it (interference, etc) happened.  Did a large fraction of the western world get brainwiped?

The brainwipe probably occurred soon after they "tore down that wall".  It was easy to identify who and what we opposed when we (the uniformed we, at least) focused our attention on the North German Plain, or Fulda Gap, or Eastern Bavaria and similarly identified points where we expected to be speed bumps in the opening salvos.  But even then, while much of the public face of the Cold War was armoured vehicles and missiles and miscellaneous hardware of conflict, both sides engaged in extensive influence operations (political warfare) that if compared to the tools available today would be almost kindergartenish.  I did a quick scour though the usual think tank resources for reports about influence operations (found some interesting ones) but this The New Republic piece provides what I feel is a quick and simple explanation.  However, to quote the article - "polarized polity where one party actively encourages its followers to distrust news from non-partisan outlets" - some may dismiss its treatise because of the publication's progressive reputation.

https://newrepublic.com/article/147122/stop-inflating-russia-threat
Stop Inflating the Russia Threat

The problem is not that American democracy was hacked, but that it is hackable.

By Jeet Heer    February 20, 2018

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of thirteen Russians last week for meddling in the 2016 election has incited hysterical threat inflation among many pundits and foreign policy experts. For Washington Post columnist Max Boot, the unfolding Russiagate story is “the second-worst foreign attack on America in the past two decades,” after 9/11. “The Russian subversion of the 2016 election did not, to be sure, kill nearly 3,000 people. But its longer-term impact may be even more corrosive by undermining faith in our democracy,” he wrote on Sunday. He accused Trump of ignoring the threat, concluding that “we are at war without a commander in chief.”

Peter Baker made a similar argument in the New York Times, claiming the indictment “underscored the broader conclusion by the American government that Russia is engaged in a virtual war against the United States through 21st-century tools of disinformation and propaganda, a conclusion shared by the president’s own senior advisers and intelligence chiefs. But it is a war being fought on the American side without a commander in chief.” Interviewed by Politico, Ash Carter, who served as secretary of defense under President Barack Obama, called for a new “Cold War containment” policy to deal with Russia.

But Russia’s interference in the election, at least what’s known thus far, is hardly enough to justify a global struggle comparable to the Cold War or the war on terror. These earlier conflicts consumed trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. The details in the Mueller indictment are troubling, but not an existential threat worth losing a single life over. New Yorker reporter Adrien Chen, who has been following Russian troll accounts for years, tweeted that the election interference waged on social-media was “90 people with a shaky grasp of English and a rudimentary understanding of U.S. politics shitposting on Facebook.” He elaborated on MSNBC:

The new Cold Warriors start from the premise that election meddling story should be seen in the framework of foreign policy: The Russian government infringed upon American sovereignty, and Donald Trump didn’t respond with sufficient hawkishness. But Trump, of course, is part of the story himself. To the extent that Russian interference shifted votes, Trump was the beneficiary—and intentionally so, according to Mueller’s indictment. And although collusion hasn’t been proven, there’s strong evidence of shady contacts between high-level Trump campaign officials and Russian political operatives. In other words, this isn’t just a foreign policy story, but also a domestic one.

The problem is not that American democracy was hacked, but that it is hackable—that there was enough fragility in American democracy for a few crude memes to have an outsized influence.

“Russia is not working according to a master plan carefully laid-out laid out by President Vladimir Putin,” Henry Farrell, of George Washington University, argued last month in Foreign Policy. “Instead, a loose collective of Russians, with incredibly meager resources, have been working together in a disorganized way to probe American democracy for weaknesses. Instead of persuading people to vote for Donald Trump, and against Clinton, they have wanted to create chaos and paranoia—and they have succeeded in stirring confusion only because there were so many weaknesses for them to exploit in the first place.” Similar Russian attempts to sway elections in France and Germany were much less successful, Farrell notes, because they don’t suffer from he calls a “basic failure of democratic knowledge” in America.

This crisis, which long predates Russian interference, stems from a polarized polity where one party actively encourages its followers to distrust news from non-partisan outlets. It’s enhanced by low voter turnout, active voter suppression, and an electoral system that is constantly manipulated by gerrymandering. The result is a citizenry that does not agree on basic facts, and many of whom distrust the system.

If democratic fragility is the root problem, launching a new Cold War is not going to solve it. Rather, there has to be an active effort to strengthen potential targets, like voting systems (many of which are old and run on outdated technology that’s vulnerable to hackers). The U.S. also needs a comprehensive civics education initiative, for children and adults alike, to instruct Americans on the U.S. Constitution and teach them how to detect propaganda and discount motivated reasoning.

Framing the election meddling as strictly a matter of outside interference will only encourage the conspiracy-mongering that already makes it hard to form a democratic consensus. “By exaggerating the actual consequences of foreign influence operations, American elites are further undermining the confidence and shared knowledge that American democracy needs to function,” Farrell argued. “They are tacitly encouraging Americans on the liberal left to build their own private universe of facts, in which Russian influence has pervasive political consequences.”

Some Democrats think that launching a new Cold War will solve the problem of polarization by unifying the country against a foreign enemy and isolating Republicans who stand with Trump in appeasing Russia. “The Democrats should and must start using Russia as a way to break through the vicious cycle consuming the parties, Washington, and the whole country,” John Stoehr argued in Washington Monthly in January. “Russia is our enemy. This is a fact. It attacked our presidential election. It continues to attack us in what is emerging as a new Cold cyberwar. In tying the Republicans to an enemy, the Democrats have the potential to break the Republicans.”

The actual history of the Cold War belies this fantasy. While Cold War liberals like President Harry Truman did use anti-communism to promote national unity, this only laid the groundwork for Republican demagogues like Senator Joseph McCarthy. Eventually, in the 1960s, the Democrats were torn apart by internal divisions over the Vietnam War. A foreign enemy is no assurance of unity, and perfectly compatible with more polarization.

Trump is the most divisive American president in at least generation. Reversing the damage he’s done to American democracy, let alone fixing the systemic flaws that predate him, is an arduous task that will require many years of political organization and education. There’s no swift solution to this crisis, and whipping up hysteria about Russia will only make it worse.
 
Thucydides said:
2. President Trump is defanging the disloyal elements inside his own government.
Mueller and everyone in each of those agencies all swore their loyalty to the Constitution. In what way are they being disloyal to it?

Also "multivalent game"? For a guy who more than two years ago had never impressed anyone with his intellect and acumen outside of grifting suckers it's puzzling to see so much wide-ranging praise heaped on him. There's a far simpler and better-fitting explanation for his disruptive shtick on the world stage and it has little to nothing to do with any interest in "America's National Interest and Grand Strategy".

With Trump you can take your pick of idioms: tiger and it's stripes; old dog and new tricks; when you hear hooves on the other side of the door think horses, not zebras. If there is anyone who should be counseled on seeing what is there and not what is believed to be there it's not those who found Trump utterly reprehensible more than two years ago and have stayed true since, but rather those who somehow found him reprehensible two years ago (social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and warhawks to name a few) but somehow magically found him to be everything they've ever wanted since.

With so much gold-plated tackiness everywhere in his properties it's been said he's a poor-man's idea of rich guy. I suspect the same dynamic might be true of his supposed intellectual gifts as well.
 
beirnini said:
Mueller and everyone in each of those agencies all swore their loyalty to the Constitution. In what way are they being disloyal to it?

Also "multivalent game"? For a guy who more than two years ago had never impressed anyone with his intellect and acumen outside of grifting suckers it's puzzling to see so much wide-ranging praise heaped on him. There's a far simpler and better-fitting explanation for his disruptive shtick on the world stage and it has little to nothing to do with any interest in "America's National Interest and Grand Strategy".

With Trump you can take your pick of idioms: tiger and it's stripes; old dog and new tricks; when you hear hooves on the other side of the door think horses, not zebras. If there is anyone who should be counseled on seeing what is there and not what is believed to be there it's not those who found Trump utterly reprehensible more than two years ago and have stayed true since, but rather those who somehow found him reprehensible two years ago (social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and warhawks to name a few) but somehow magically found him to be everything they've ever wanted since.

With so much gold-plated tackiness everywhere in his properties it's been said he's a poor-man's idea of rich guy. I suspect the same dynamic might be true of his supposed intellectual gifts as well.

One can be loyal to the constitution and still undermine one's leadership.
 
Brad Sallows said:
>Let's put it this way. Russia was found trying to destabilize American democracy through their cyber assaults. Those activities continue.

At what point since 1945 - perhaps since a time earlier - has Russia not being trying to destabilize American (and other) democracy (by various means)?  At what point was the US not trying to do the same thing, only aimed the other way?

I understand people being excited about Trump's lackwit response to all this (interference, etc).  What I don't get is the level of outrage and excitement about the fact that it (interference, etc) happened.  Did a large fraction of the western world get brainwiped?

Richard Nixon actually did the exact same thing to help secure his Presidency.  He governed on a "Peace in Vietnam" platform and then secretly met with  South Vietnamese officials and convinced them refuse to sit at the peace talks until after the election.  A move that basically amounts to treason.

Richard Nixon actively worked against his country's national interest in order to benefit himself.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/nixon-tried-to-spoil-johnsons-vietnam-peace-talks-in-68-notes-show.amp.html

Bottom line, politics is dirty and people will say and do what they need to do to get elected.
 
An article analysing the divisions in America.

There are absolutely two Americas. Sometimes in the same state.
Analysis by Ronald Brownstein, CNN

Updated 10:10 AM ET, Fri July 20, 2018

Click on the video for Ronald Brownstein's full report.

Abingdon, Virginia (CNN)A tale of two Virginia districts explains why the geographic, demographic and cultural chasm between the parties in the House of Representatives is about to grow much wider -- with ominous implications for America's escalating political tensions.

In the affluent, diverse, 10th Congressional District of Virginia in the Washington suburbs, a sharp backlash against President Trump has left Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock as perhaps the nation's most endangered GOP incumbent. Simultaneously, in the preponderantly white, working-class and rural 9th Congressional District of Virginia, which includes this picturesque town in the state's far southwestern corner, Trump's popularity is reinforcing the strength of Republican Rep. Morgan Griffith, who captured the seat from a veteran Democrat during the GOP landslide of 2010.

. . .

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/20/politics/2018-midterms-brownstein-two-americas-in-virginia/index.html

:cheers:
 
Remius said:
One can be loyal to the constitution and still undermine one's leadership.
That's not disloyalty, though. Insubordination at most, and if one remains true to their oath - i.e. ignores unconstitutional/illegal orders as one should - then it's not even that.

Did Ken Starr ever have to answer to charges of disloyalty? Pretty sure he did not.
 
beirnini said:
That's not disloyalty, though. Insubordination at most, and if one remains true to their oath - i.e. ignores unconstitutional/illegal orders as one should - then it's not even that.

Did Ken Starr ever have to answer to charges of disloyalty? Pretty sure he did not.

Loyalties vary.

One can be loyal/disloyal to a leader, subordinate, country, dog etc etc.  Sometimes you can be loyal to more than one at a time.  Or being loyal to one might mean being disloyal to another. 
 
I tend to prefer that individuals are more loyal to their country than they are to any given leader.
 
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/07/20/michael-cohen-recorded-trump-talking-about-playboy-model-payoff-report.html

President Donald Trump was secretly recorded by his then-lawyer Michael Cohen just two months before the 2016 presidential election talking about paying off a Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Trump, a new report said Friday.

The New York Times reported that the FBI seized that recording, which related to model Karen McDougal, during a raid on Cohen's office in New York City on April 9.
Small stuff in the grand scheme of things, but I for one,  am very in what else Cohen might have recorded with the president.
 
>those who somehow found him reprehensible two years ago (social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and warhawks to name a few) but somehow magically found him to be everything they've ever wanted since.

It's a mistake to keep assuming that what you see is what there is.

Hypothesis: some of the people who (apparently paradoxically or inexplicably) defend Trump, privately harbour deep frustration and anger at his conduct.  They do it to keep Trump secure in office to achieve paramount political objectives (eg. control of USSC and other federal judiciary nominations).

Prediction: if Trump neglects those objectives (eg. starts nominating justices without regard for the advice he has been following to date), his support will rapidly diminish among people who would ordinarily be expected to find him reprehensible.
 
Altair said:
I tend to prefer that individuals are more loyal to their country than they are to any given leader.

I agree and further, the various oaths required to be given in the US (for citizenship, the military etc) all swear allegiance to the Constitution. Nowhere is there any requirement to be "loyal" to any given politician, including the President.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_Allegiance_(United_States)

This is quite clearly in accordance with the wishes of the founding fathers who were expressly rejecting the concept of loyalty to the King of England and instead putting the in place something bigger than any one man; the principles upon which their nation was founded.

The oath of induction into the military constitutes a promise to uphold and defend the constitution  and includes a phrase "that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces_oath_of_enlistment

Note that this does not constitute an oath of loyalty merely obedience of lawful orders in accordance with regulations and the UCMJ.

Just as a counterpoint do you think that over the last decade everyone was "loyal" to Obama. Trump's birther spoutings showed quite clearly that he wasn't.

:cheers:
 
Trump wasn't a member of the administration, and I'd be surprised if he had sworn any oath to obey the president.  Surely this parenthesis about the ideal of "loyalty" is only relevant to elected, appointed, and employed members of the government?
 
Remius said:
Loyalties vary.

One can be loyal/disloyal to a leader, subordinate, country, dog etc etc.  Sometimes you can be loyal to more than one at a time.  Or being loyal to one might mean being disloyal to another.
The quote I responded to presumed some form of loyalty. The only expressed loyalty by all that were referred to in the quote is to the constitution of the United States. Any other loyalty cannot be rightfully assumed, not if the United States of America is still a nation under the rule of law.

But of course we have a president who admitted he would like to give "president for life" a try and was met with a shockingly small amount of controversy over it, so I see can how some might be confused.
 
Brad Sallows said:
>those who somehow found him reprehensible two years ago (social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and warhawks to name a few) but somehow magically found him to be everything they've ever wanted since.

It's a mistake to keep assuming that what you see is what there is.

Hypothesis: some of the people who (apparently paradoxically or inexplicably) defend Trump, privately harbour deep frustration and anger at his conduct.  They do it to keep Trump secure in office to achieve paramount political objectives (eg. control of USSC and other federal judiciary nominations).

Prediction: if Trump neglects those objectives (eg. starts nominating justices without regard for the advice he has been following to date), his support will rapidly diminish among people who would ordinarily be expected to find him reprehensible.
We've already seen the rabid, scorched-earth practices on parliamentary procedure that the GOP under McConnell went to in order to secure a nomination to the USSC. The end result was (along with the preferred justice) a total abdication and possible destruction of any pretense that Congress should be a representative and deliberative body: No more "In God We Trust" or "From Many, One", the new de facto motto of American representative democratic governance is "Winner Takes All".

With the object of another justice (or what have you) the same tolerated degree of rabid scorched-earth by Trump's enablers let loose in the executive branch can only end in a similarly extreme transformation of the presidency. I don't know what a 'winner-takes-all' president ultimately is but Trump's admiration and approval of "President for Life" is likely a good hint. Whatever it is it certainly wouldn't be something that the founders envisioned or would have tolerated.

Edit:
Be that all as it may or may not, my point of intentionally overlooked reprehensibility in Trump is significantly less puzzling than the praise he receives for the quality of his acumen and scope of his capacities that have somehow completely escaped the notice of everyone he's ever encountered previous to two years ago. There's a touch 'Dear Leader' revisionism going on.
 
>We've already seen the rabid, scorched-earth practices on parliamentary procedure that the GOP under McConnell went to in order to secure a nomination to the USSC.

McConnell made incremental adjustments to a 35-year deteriorating trend in which most of the incremental adjustments were made by Democrats.

During the Bork nomination process (1987), Democrats went through the motions of a committee hearing while poisoning the public debate (Ted Kennedy being prominent) and then voted to reject in committee.  McConnell didn't bother with a committee hearing.

In 2013, Harry Reid ended the filibuster for judicial nominations, excepting USSC nominations, and during the 2016 elections commented that he thought Democrats would and should end it for USSC nominations.  McConnell ended it for USSC nominations.

In addition to being angry about the specific issue (the "lost" nomination), Democrats are angry about being pre-empted on the opportunity to end the USSC filibuster.

Articles by Democrats and Democrat supporters are full of praise for simple majoritarian government.  So far, it looks like the opportunity to end the legislative filibuster is set aside for them to do.
 
Altair said:
Quick question.

How was this wrong?

Final election results.

Donald Trump 62,984,828

Hillary Clinton 65,853,514

It ended with a 2 point advantage for Clinton, well within the CBS poll margin of error.

This poll accurately measures irrelevant information. Presidential elections are won by Electoral College votes. You might as well ask how many yards the Blue Jays rushed for in their game against the Tigers, or how many icing penalties France accumulated on the way to the World Cup.
 
Clinton didn't even campaign in all states unlike Trump,he outworked her.She seems to be gearing uo for 2020. :o
 
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