BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

I see that in a head to head, asking who they would vote for today, Clinton outscores Trump 42-40. Which is a little weird because when the question is who is qualified to be president, Clinton outscores Trump 55-31. I would like to hear from those who think Trump is unqualified to be president but plan to vote for him. Well, maybe I don't want to hear from them.

Obama delivers commencement speech at Rutgers: 'Ignorance is not a virtue'


Sad that this is even a point that needed making...

Many people will vote for their party no matter who the candidate is. And there are plenty who just dislike Hillary, even though they may admit that she's more qualified.

Pretty sure net favorability means what you think it means. I wonder what the % would be for "kill them both and try again" (if you excuse the slightly excessive measure proposed).

Yes, that's so. And no doubt it is the explanation or a lot of it. I would still expect a person to feel a little unease if the pollsters asks if Trump is qualified, and they say not, and then the pollster asks who they are going to vote for and they say Trump. It should at least cause a little discomfort. I suppose there are degrees of unqualified.

You may think I am joking (and I am) but during the Viet Nam war a guy was arrested or at least detained by the Secret Service because he said or wrote (you can see I don't recall the precise details) that "Johnson's war makes me puke". When challenged, the agency maintained that if enough people puked on the president it could be life threatening.

It's not really clear to me what "qualified" means in this case. Legally, it only means US citizen from birth and 35+ years old. Pretty clear Trump qualifies unless you believe Bill Maher's bit about him being half orangutan.

If "qualified" means having a lot of relevant knowledge or experience, it's easy to imagine thinking someone "unqualified" would be better than someone who has a lot of misguided opinions despite a lot of experience. My guess is this describes a set of reluctant Trump voters who would have preferred someone with governing experience but just cannot stand to vote for Clinton.

Yes, that's so. And no doubt it is the explanation or a lot of it. I would still expect a person to feel a little unease if the pollsters asks if Trump is qualified, and they say not, and then the pollster asks who they are going to vote for and they say Trump. It should at least cause a little discomfort. I suppose there are degrees of unqualified.

It's not really clear to me what "qualified" means in this case.

His hands are big enough.

>> It's not really clear to me what "qualified" means in this case.

Sorry, it remind me very old Soviet joke. I hope my translation make sense.

International Art exhibition for specialists only.
Picasso forgot his ID. Security person asks him to prove he is "qualified" as an art specialist. Picasso took the pencil and drawn the bird. Security person let him in.

USSR Minister of Culture forgot her ID too. The same security person asks her to prove she is "qualified" as an art specialist.
“I am the Minister of Culture for 14 years,” saying she.
“Could you please prove it," saying security. “Picasso just had the same problem and he drawn the bird…”
“Who is that Picasso guy and why did he draw bird?” interrupted she.
“Welcome, Minister.”

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, first of all, the phenomenon that we’ve just seen is an extreme version of something that’s been going on just for years in the Republican primaries. Take a look back at the preceding ones. Every time a candidate came up from the base—Bachmann, McCain, Santorum, Huckabee, one crazier than the other—every time one rose from the base, the Republican establishment sought to beat them down and get their own—get their own man—you know, Romney. And they succeeded, until this year. This year the same thing happened, and they didn’t succeed. The pressure from the base was too great for them to beat it back. Now, that’s the disaster that the Republican establishment sees. But the phenomenon goes way back. And it has roots. It’s kind of like jihadis: You have to ask about the roots.

What are the roots? The Republican—both political parties have shifted to the right during the neoliberal period—the period, you know, since Reagan, goes back to late Carter, escalated under Reagan—during this period, which has been a period of stagnation and decline for much of the population in many ways—wages, benefits, security and so on—along with enormous wealth concentrated in a tiny fraction of the population, mostly financial institutions, which are—have a dubious, if not harmful, role on the economy. This has been going on for a generation. And while this has been happening, there’s a kind of a vicious cycle. You have more concentration of wealth, concentration of political power, legislation to increase concentration of wealth and power, and so on, that while that’s been going on, much of the population has simply been cast aside. The white working class is bitter and angry, for lots of reasons, including these. The minority populations were hit very hard by the Clinton destruction of the welfare system and the incarceration rules. They still tend to support the Democrats, but tepidly, because the alternative is worse, and they’re taking a kind of pragmatic stand.

But while the parties have shifted to—but the parties have shifted so far to the right that the—today’s mainstream Democrats are pretty much what used to be called moderate Republicans. Now, the Republicans are just off the spectrum. They have been correctly described by leading conservative commentators, like Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, as just what they call a radical insurgency, which has abandoned parliamentary politics. And they don’t even try to conceal it. Like as soon as Obama was elected, Mitch McConnell said, pretty much straight out, "We have only one policy: make the country ungovernable, and then maybe we can somehow get power again." That’s just off the spectrum.

Now, the actual policies of the Republicans, whether it’s Paul Ryan or Donald Trump, to the extent that he’s coherent, Ted Cruz, you pick him, or the establishment, is basically enrich and empower the very rich and the very powerful and the corporate sector. You cannot get votes that way. So therefore the Republicans have been compelled to turn to sectors of the population that can be mobilized and organized on other grounds, kind of trying to put to the side the actual policies, hoping, the establishment hopes, that the white working class will be mobilized to vote for their bitter class enemies, who want to shaft them in every way, by appealing to something else, like so-called social conservatism—you know, abortion rights, racism, nationalism and so on. And to some extent, that’s happened. That’s the kind of thing that Fritz Stern was referring to in the article that I mentioned about Germany’s collapse, this descent into barbarism. So what you have is a voting base consisting of evangelical Christians, ultranationalists, racists, disaffected, angry, white working-class sectors that have been hit very hard, that are—you know, not by Third World standards, but by First World standards, we even have the remarkable phenomenon of an increase in mortality among these sectors, that just doesn’t happen in developed societies. All of that is a voting base. It does produce candidates who terrify the corporate, wealthy, elite establishment. In the past, they’ve been able to beat them down. This time they aren’t doing it. And that’s what’s happening to the so-called Republican Party.

“I’m really rich,” Donald Trump said when he was announcing his run for president and many times since. The image of Trump as a billionaire businessman, impervious to donor influence and thus fully able to do and say as he pleases, has been a key part of his appeal to followers. But nailing down Trump’s actual worth in order to get a full accounting of his supposed billions has been difficult, and his refusal to turn over his tax records has only added to the mystery.

Crain’s New York Business did some digging around Trump’s finances, and the answer could be that he makes far, far less per year than he’s boasted about. According to the outlet, for the last three years, Trump qualified for a tax break that only applies to married couples who take in less than $500,000 a year. Granted, half a million dollars a year is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s much less than the $362 million he’s previously said he raked in during 2014. According to Crain’s:

It’s called the STAR program, which stands for the New York State School Tax Relief Program and has been around since 1997. It offers an approximately $300 annual benefit for those who qualify. Hundreds of thousands of New York homeowners get it. Here’s where it gets interesting for Trump: To be eligible for STAR, a married couple must have annual income of $500,000 or less. One wouldn’t think a guy as rich as Trump claims to be would qualify, but records filed with the city’s Department of Finance show he received a $302 STAR benefit on his latest property-tax bill for his Trump Tower penthouse on Fifth Avenue.That means whatever his annual income is, it’s less than $500,000.

“It’s strange that a billionaire would apply for a $302 tax benefit and, moreover, that he would take it,” said Martha Stark, a property-tax expert and former New York City finance commissioner who is now a lecturer at Baruch College.