O/T FAO mich & robus

[Newcy Wolf]

It would be interesting to hear your views on recent events over there regarding President Trump (still doesn't sound right), Hilary Clinton and what the future may hold over there.

[Robus]

A lot of sour faces over here, I can tell you. I don't know what kind of president Trump will be, but we will survive him. If he turns out to be awful, he will enjoy two years with Republican majorities in the House and Senate, then we will be back to divided government.

Honestly I'm not surprised. Hillary ran an incompetent campaign that failed to hold together the coalition that elected Obama. There must be millions of voters who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 and Trump in 2016 (well, I know of one...). Too many people found too many reasons not to vote for Hillary. Her neo-liberal economic proclivities and close ties to Wall Street turned away some. Her neo-conservative and hawkish foreign policy turned away others. Her mistreatment of Bernie Sanders alienated the younger and more idealistic Democratic voters. Recently she has taken to parroting the rhetoric and slogans of Black Lives Matter in hopes of drawing in the black voters who helped elect Obama. She failed, but in the process alienated even more white voters who have seen that movement for what it is. She made a classic mistake in labeling Trump supporters "a basket of deplorables, racists, ***ists, etc." In my estimation, the country is getting tired of that style of rhetoric from the left, which has decided it no longer needs to debate issues but can simply claim the moral high ground and label the opposition bigots. Then there was trail of lies and corruption that has surrounded the Clintons that goes back to the 1990s. Etc.

So, we had our Brexit moment and elected the Orange One.

[WOODLANDSWOLF]

I think that is a very fair and accurate description of what happened. In the end we have a loud mouth braggart for a president but as you say Robus, we will survive him as we have survived Obama. It's still better than having the criminal scum that is the Clinton's back in the Whitehouse

[MichiganWolf]

I posted this on another board, but Hillary is just not a good candidate. She was supposed to be a favorite heading into the 08 democratic primaries. Lost out to an unknown candidate from Illinois. She almost got beat out by a Jewish democratic socialist (that might as be Joseph Stalin to some in this country) in this year's primaries. And she lost the presidential election an orange with a toupee that has no political experience and is a racist and misogynist whacko. They picked a person that was more despised than an elite with no filter that brags about touching women without their consent.

Now, I don't think he will follow through with some of his campaign statements (registering Muslims, the wall, gay marriage back to deciding state by state). I think alot of his campaign was just blatant pandering (and as Robus stated, lots of Hillary's was as well). Many Republicans still don't like him, they just liked Hillary even less. I think if he truly tries to do some of what he's promised, he'll be stopped. He won't bring jobs back (neither would Hillary) because the kind of jobs that are leaving can be performed for cheaper in other countries. We don't have a lack of jobs, we have a lack of people skilled enough to perform those jobs. Which means we need to up our investment in education and really focus on that the next couple decades.

My two most important issues are foreign policy and education. Neither Hillary or Trump have foreign policies that make me comfortable. We have alot of people (minorities, homo***uals, transgender etc) that are fearful of what will happen to them with Trump as president, and rightly so. However, I imagine that's how most people in the third world feel whenever a president is elected in the United States because of our military involvement in virtually the entire world. I voted third party because they were the only ones that had non-imperialist foreign policies IMO. As I stated earlier, education could fix alot of the problems in our country. There's alot to be changed about it (curriculum, standards, access, affordability etc). Between Trump and Hillary, there was only one education policy I was gung-ho about and that was Hillary wanting to expand Head Start (free pre-school).