Trumpety-Trump

[poliphilo]

An American friend who is distraught about Trump and admires the Clintons is sending me furious emails about how terrible the Republicans are. I don't exactly disagree, but my considered opinion is that the Democrats aren't much better- and anyway Trump is only nominally a Republican- and she won't be having it.  I'm trying to keep my temper but it's hard. Every attempt to mollify or distract or philosophise is met with more shouting. If I do anything but wholeheartedly agree with her I get an essay about how furious she is and how I'm little better than an appeaser of nazis.

We went through a storm of this a few week back- and then it died down because I told her to stop. I've told her again. I don't want to lose her friendship but this isn't how friends behave.

At the moment I'm holding my peace about Trump. He keeps sending out signals- and one tweet contradicts the last and it's hard to say whether this is because he's scatterbrained or because like a World War II bomber trying to confuse enemy radar he's throwing out chaff. I refuse to jump up and down and call him a moron and a nazi because I don't think we have sufficient information yet. Also it's unintelligent. He's a political phenomenon the likes of which we've never seen before- besides being a very odd human being- and shouting out the insults of yesteryear is like firing a shotgun at a distant moving target.

Comments

[tagryn]

I recall there being a rumor after he won the GOP nomination that one of his sons went to Kasich with an offer to be VP, saying that he would be in charge of running the day-to-day of the government because DT would be too busy "making America great again." As a #NeverTrumper Kasich turned him down, but seeing how things have played out so far with the transition, it wouldn't surprise me if Pence is in charge of more areas that even Cheney was (basically everything Trump finds boring to deal with).

I think Biden would have won in a landslide, had he wanted it. Sanders would likely have won as well - in an election where his proposals actually were subjected to a close look he might have been in trouble, but that wasn't a election about policy, on either side.