The similarities between Obama and Trump
I have long thought that this sort of thing may be true (the link is to a piece by Rich Lowry):
But every indication is that Obama and Trump are similar in that their modes of operating work much better for them than their parties.
Both pioneered a different way of doing presidential politics, and built a new coalition for victory. But no one could replicate Obama’s model, and so far, no one has shown any signs of successfully adapting to, let alone copying, Trump’s…
As a result, the only Democrat left standing after the Obama years was Obama himself. Trump could be creating a similar dynamic.
Lowry goes on to criticize the Bannon approach:
This gets to the idiocy of Steve Bannon’s project to try to run Trump-like insurgents everywhere. Bannon is trying to recapture the magic of 2016, without the one indispensable ingredient ”” Trump himself.
I agree about the similarity between Trump and Obama in this respect. But I disagree with Lowry in that I don’t see it as really being about Trump or about Obama. I believe that the election of each of these untested newcomers (Trump even more of a newcomer than Obama) to the highest office in the land was a symptom of a change that had already happened in the US and in the electorate itself.
“We are more polarized now” is a cliche. But it’s true, and it didn’t just happen—it’s been building and building for at least two decades (and almost certainly longer that that). I would add that we are more cynical now, more conspiracy-minded, more disgusted with institutions that used to be more admired: the press, Congress, the FBI, and the “establishment” of both parties. The entire system by which party leaders came up through the ranks and were at least somewhat respected is broken; the electorate isn’t buying it, for the most part. Outsiders and/or charismatic extremists are elected, and then they are found wanting and the pendulum swings to someone seen as an outsider and/or charismatic extremist on the other side.
Obama and Trump (and Bannon, for that matter) didn’t cause this—they are the results of it.
Here’s one author’s take on why Trump won. Never heard of the man, but he’s pretty spot on, IMO.
“”US” by Paul Genova
(Mr. Paul Genova has been President and Chief Operating Officer of Wireless Telecom Group Inc. since June 30, 2016.)
I haven’t said too much about this election since the start…but this is how I feel….
I’m noticing that a lot of people aren’t graciously accepting the fact that their candidate lost.
In fact they seem to be posting even more hateful things about those who voted for Trump. Some are apparently “triggered” because they are posting how “sick” they feel about the results.
How did this happen you ask? Well, here is how it happened!
You created “us” when you attacked our freedom of speech.
You created “us” when you attacked our right to bear arms.
You created “us” when you attacked our Christian beliefs.
You created “us” when you constantly referred to us as racists.
You created “us” when you constantly called us xenophobic.
You created “us” when you told us to get on board or get out of the way.
You created “us” when you attacked our flag
You created “us” when you took God out of our schools.
You created “us” when you confused women’s rights with feminism.
You created “us” when you began to emasculate men.
You created “us” when you decided to make our children soft.
You created “us” when you decided to vote for progressive ideals.
You created “us” when you attacked our way of life.
You created “us” when you decided to let our government get out of control.
You created “us,” the silent majority
You created “us” when you began murdering innocent law enforcement officers.
You created “us” when you lied and said we could keep our insurance plans and our doctors.
You created “us” when you allowed our jobs to continue to leave our country.
You created “us” when you took a knee, or stayed seated or didn’t remove your hat during our National Anthem.
You created “us” when you forced us to buy health care and then financially penalized us for not participating.
And we became fed up and we pushed back and spoke up.
And we did it with ballots, not bullets.
With ballots, not riots.
With ballots, not looting.
With ballots, not blocking traffic.
With ballots, not fires, except the one you started inside of “us”
“YOU” created “US”.
It really is just that simple.”
Trump was the candidate who recognized these grievances and offered an agenda for change that the deplorables (“US”) could support.
Trump’s unique quality is that he speaks in a way that everyday people understand and he isn’t afraid of any special interest groups. He says things that are verboten by the PC police and he enjoys taking on the MSM. To those who want politics to be upscale and tidy, Trump is too outlandish and un-presidential for their tastes. In that way he’s much like Andrew Jackson.
Where are we headed? Toward an economic boom and peace through strength if Trump can get his agenda through.
“we are more cynical now, more conspiracy-minded, more disgusted with institutions that used to be more admired: the press, Congress, the FBI, and the “establishment” of both parties” because their betrayal has become so obvious that excuses no longer suffice.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” A. Lincoln
The Left has bet everything on being able to fool enough of the people… long enough.
If you look at most European democracies, you’d see a lot of coalitions. In the newer, ex-Commie places like Slovakia and Poland, many coalitions consist of parties which are basically the party apparatus around a single guy.
The unwritten non-legal yet very real “two party” system of the US has been mostly better supporting more establishment types.
Yet the Clintons really are terrible in away not seen since WW I, much less II. And Hillary is NOT a demagogue, yet almost won.
I’m sure glad Trump won; and he’s doing far better than your pre-Trump posts predicted — altho the swamp is fighting back more strongly than suspected.
The success of PC-nazis certainly is helping to create US.
The establishment is doing their best to discredit Bannon because he’s the only one who’s suggested a unified campaign to throw the feckless losers in GOP leadership out.
They’re trying to blame him for Alabama, when it was McConnell’s interference that led to Moore instead of Brooks.
Wait and see: the establishment is going to try to do what they did in AL to every other race. I’ve already heard murmurings that they’re trying to inject other candidates into the AZ race against Kelli Ward, the person who got Flake to resign by challenging him and giving the people another option.
None of those people had the guts to step forward while Flake was still in office, condemning AZ voters to perpetually have to vote for Flake (just like they do for McCain).
Neo…
The dynamic is media nakedness.
It’s the WWW that’s exposing the ugliness of ‘salami manufacture’ in DC.
This latest hyper scandal with the FBI, DoJ, et. al. would NEVER have been exposed twenty-years ago.
You know, when it took Drudge to out Bill Clinton as the sex-dog he is.
Mueller and Comey == Praetorians…
Self-confident and arrogant enough to make and break candidates, presidents.
The Roman Empire never recovered from the Praetorians. It was at the heart of the rot — centuries before the Empire succumbed to financing the Praetorians in the manner that they’d become accustomed.
Forgotten in the modern age, many, many Praetorians — in the manner of Comey and Mueller — moved up the ranks and then left the military to become Big Wheels in Rome. They could always call upon their pals in the ranks to rough up anyone that stood in their ‘commercial way.’
DC works to the exact same hustle, with the DoJ and FBI, et. al. replacing the Praetorians.
Today, they are deemed “The Deep State.”
How Trump and Obama are .. not? .. alike.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/new-york-times-claims-obama-only-told-18-falsehoods-during-his-whole-presidency-here-are-18-he-told-in-selling-obamacare-in-2009-alone/article/2643666
But no one could replicate Obama’s model, and so far, no one has shown any signs of successfully adapting to, let alone copying, Trump’s…
Unless Trum is just copying you or somebody else…
I don’t like copycats.
“We are more polarized now” is a cliche.
Still was, when prophets, crazy people, and those with foresight and foreknowledge started talking about Civil War 2 in the US.
Trum or his admin or the Alt Right talking about sending National Guard to Chicago…. reminds me that I had raised the topic with Grim, at his blog which is a former author of Milblogs like Blackfive during the OIF, that Bush II should send COIN forces into Chicago because the Leftist alliance is using it as a fortress fiefdom to transform and betray the USA. Use it or lose it before 2008, I wrote.
Nobody that spoke up in public took me seriously back then. But they’ll take Trum seriously… hah, wonder who that joke is on.
Of course now a days I cannot guarantee COIn would work in Chicago, because we don’t have Petraeus any more. And our military is almost 50% infiltrated by transgender officers, Leftist occult worshippers, and other traitors put in by Hussein.
Today, they are deemed “The Deep State.”
That’s not the Deep State. That’s still the Surface State, the outer layer of the onion.
Americans haven’t even gotten past the middle layers yet… heh, Deep State. Originally the Alt Right came up with the term to unify all the conspiratorial theory boys from JFK assassination up to 9/11 truthers, without respect to politics. Not sure how long that can hold given Novus ordo seclorum.
What most people, in politics or here, think of for the “Deep State” is the FBI and other bureaucrats. Again, that’s the surface layer, not the deep layer. Somebody would have to get off their lazy fat couch potato behavioral indoctrination and look up Operation Paperclip and NASA before they can figure out what the Deep means in Deep State.
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Yet the Clintons really are terrible in away not seen since WW I, much less II. And Hillary is NOT a demagogue, yet almost won.
The Clintons are the outcome of Watergate which is where the traditions of American politics ended. You could say Lyndon Johnson and his help that Kennedy needed to steal the 1960 election. That set the ball rolling. If you doubt that, read Caro’s biography of Johnson. It is four volumes and he is still working on the last one if he lives long enough.
Kennedy chose Johnson for VP because he knew he needed Texas. Johnson knew how to steal Texas because he had stolen the 1948 Senate election and the people who stole the voters for him were still there, one had served a prison term but was back.
Life Magazine had a special issue set to go out on Johnson’s corruption and were in an editorial meeting to finalize the printing when Kennedy was shot. The issue was cancelled and here we are.
Kennedy made TV the real test of candidates. Carter was weak and Reagan was good. Hence 1980.
Bush I was weak but had the Reagan push. The Administrative state that had begun in Watergate got a big boost under Bush. Clinton confirmed its power. “If I were to be reincarnated, I want to come back as the Bond Market.”
I would have voted for Perot in 1992 but he imploded.
Clinton sold is to the Chinese for cash. He ignored terrorism and gave us 9/11. He pushed the CRA and gave us the 2008 real estate crash.
If Trump goes down, a very flawed vessel but critical to our survival, we are really lost. It’s the only advantage I can think of about being old. But I do have grandchildren.
Back in the Sixties, I did some civil rights work in MS. As you would expect, most of the folks were from what might be considered the campus left. Then there was me. Fraternity man, jock, supported the war in VN, would later enlist.
While my colleagues were never mean-spirited, there were occasional ribbings about the fact that they were they and I was…not. All in fun.
Except when referring to others like me who were not in the group.
And it was obvious on campus how much the left hated and despised, scorned and sneered at the bourgeois Greeks and the average bourgeois student.
So did it start then? My father played football for UConn, class of ’43. Turns out the men’s group with the highest grade point was…the football team. The lefties running the campus paper refused to print it. The coach bought an ad with the info.
That the electorate could elect yet another unknown in 2020 seem to me a real possibility. After some of the people who voted for Trump voted for Obama and I agree the dissatisfaction in the electorate has been growing for some time right throughout the Western world. Electorates have been electing first one side, then the other and not being very impressed with either side. I think of that back and fort behaviour ‘hunting’ and the US has broken out of the tweedledum tweedledee lack of effective difference by going for two outsiders in a row. I think things are highly und=certain because what has worked in the past politically in called into serious question. Like Trump could lose even if he gets the economy going at 4% or better. Mueller may succeed in getting him out. He may lose one or both houses of Congress in 2018 and still win reelection in 2020. My personal conviction is based of Toynbee’s 1940s assertion that civilisational decline sets in sets in seriously when the dominant minority looses the confidence of the internal proletariat. (The external proletariat is ‘you know who’, fellow deplorables.) I think the establishment will try to take power back, and may well succeed, but their policies are going to fail even more noticeably than in the past.
Bannon would have had more leverage if he hadn’t burned his bridges with the other Breitbart writers and journalists: the Shapiro faction they can be called since they left with Shapiro.
The problem with humans fools who want to be the power behind their Emperor, is that they think their strategic real politek is right and nothing else is right.
Without the Deep State behind him, he’s going to need more effective strategy than Russian “burn it all down”. The human is far away from the utmost skill in Sun Tzu’s Art of War.
The Alt Right and Deep State is okay with a Trum. Not so much a Cruz or a Moore however. Bannon, because he was not a leader in the Alt Right just an ally with the coalition, may not actually understand this issue.
the US has broken out of the tweedledum tweedledee lack of effective difference by going for two outsiders in a row.
The US is set up as blue vs red, for non obvious reasons. But if you are referring to Hussein as an outsider, then he’d be an outside from the Senate.
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