Repair ETA?

[ondma]

He's pissed off everyone from Muslims to military trans. People won't forget how he wiped his ass with them. Hopefully farmers have longer memories too. Does anyone here really think re-election is viable at this point?



That's why it's called faith. Gotta keep it.

I most certainly do think Trump can be re-elected, and even worse, think it is quite likely. First the economy, at least by unemployment numbers is great, he has a rock solid base of a strange coalition of evangelicals, rednecks, and ultra rich, and the Democrats are pathetically unable to field a viable candidate to take advantage of what should be a slam dunk political opportunity. Add to that the inequality of the Electoral college, and he definitely has a strong chance to be re-elected.

 

[sandorski]

Knock so many things over that it is impossible for the next Dude to pickup the few things you prefer to remain knocked over.

 

[Sgt. York]

He won't get California's electoral votes.

 

[Viper1j]

I most certainly do think Trump can be re-elected, and even worse, think it is quite likely. First the economy, at least by unemployment numbers is great, he has a rock solid base of a strange coalition of evangelicals, rednecks, and ultra rich, and the Democrats are pathetically unable to field a viable candidate to take advantage of what should be a slam dunk political opportunity. Add to that the inequality of the Electoral college, and he definitely has a strong chance to be re-elected.

I wonder how any lgbtq people and family will vote for him after his military ban. How many Muslim voters do you think he'll get? After family seperations, how many Latinos are going to be on his side? You think farmers on welfare are going to want him to stay? I have a hard time buying that there are enough inbred Nazis to out number all the normal people.

He won't get California's electoral votes.

There are 11-16 states where he won't even be on the ballot! California is one of them. He can't get votes where no one knows his name.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I was talking with my kid brother last night.. And the subject came up of an eta to repair the country, and even where to start. When the US has a normal President again (opposed to a president) some things are going to be easy to fix, some not so much. My thought was to start with the simple stuff. First thing, reverse the Muslim ban, knock down any of the magical wall that might have gone up. Rejoin the Paris Climate thing, and roll your sleeves up, and get down to the grunt work of undoing the damage from the tariffs and the tax scam.

Where would you start?

And do you think it can all be fixed in one term? Or is it going to be like a 20 year thing?

My congratulations on posting this thread. I've been thinking much the same thing for a year or more.

The formerly Republican Congress and now Trump have vowed to reverse everything legitimately accomplished under the Obama presidency. This is a rule-of-thumb they seem to have adopted, and its legitimacy is severely doomed because it is of purely racist origin. It assumes that Obama could not do anything right; that because he was black, his legacy must be erased totally. This included the ACA -- which had a good chance of even greater success if it had been improved and modified. It includes several designations of national monuments under executive order. It includes the Iran agreement multilaterally completed with European allies, which Colin Powell had called a "good agreement". Their other targets are too numerous to mention.

For this reason -- that Trump's anti-Obama campaign was born of outright racism -- none of Trump's decisions or successes can be held up as legitimate. Separately and additional to that, Trump has had no real plan behind his agenda. His handling of the refugee crisis, together with his pursuit of a Wall as monument to himself, his treatment of our allies, his gutting of the State Department and his dalliances with Putin and Little Kim, his obscene tax-cut for the rich, his educational policies, his interior policies, -- all of his policies and initiatives -- lack wisdom and have no value. Instead, they have only imposed costs on the American people with no benefits.

But one priority will not get enough attention. Having introduced corrupt, inept, unprepared, incompetent leadership in the cabinet agencies, and having left many position unfilled, others unconfirmed -- he has severely damaged the morale and direction of the NON-PARTISAN CAREER CIVIL SERVICE which has been abused by the appointees. This includes career foreign service officers and experts of all kinds in all of the agencies. If various functions have been performed under contract by private companies paid by the government, then the contract-management process has likely deteriorated and those relationships are damaged as well.

Whoever succeeds Trump will need to restore all of what Trump has damaged. The government has lost valuable talent and experience, because I imagine there has been a surge of career service people leaving government and seeking other careers.

Attention needs to be directed at this carnage. Further, I would demand that US OPM conduct systematic surveys of employees hired after February 2017 in the career service, and review the credentials and qualifications of hires against their current job descriptions. There is no doubt that this process has also been corrupted.

 

[Muse]

Kinda off the top of my head (this is an awesome thread!!!). I figure if things go really well, 12 years. If things go badly, maybe never.

 

[Viper1j]

But one priority will not get enough attention. Having introduced corrupt, inept, unprepared, incompetent leadership in the cabinet agencies, and having left many position unfilled, others unconfirmed -- he has severely damaged the morale and direction of the NON-PARTISAN CAREER CIVIL SERVICE which has been abused by the appointees. This includes career foreign service officers and experts of all kinds in all of the agencies. If various functions have been performed under contract by private companies paid by the government, then the contract-management process has likely deteriorated and those relationships are damaged as well.

Whoever succeeds Trump will need to restore all of what Trump has damaged. The government has lost valuable talent and experience, because I imagine there has been a surge of career service people leaving government and seeking other careers.

Attention needs to be directed at this carnage. Further, I would demand that US OPM conduct systematic surveys of employees hired after February 2017 in the career service, and review the credentials and qualifications of hires against their current job descriptions. There is no doubt that this process has also been corrupted.

Having had a friend that was recently re-hired, one year after being "downsized", I'd like to think that all the honorable people that left would be contacted to come back, and that they would accept.

Just because they didn't want to swim in a sewer, doesn't mean they didn't enjoy swimming.