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In reply to the discussion: About the upcoming transition to general election season [View all]nyabingi
(1,145 posts)First, here's what I think of Donald Trump.
Trump is first off an attention-starved, power-hungry egomaniac - very much like your standard Wall Street type of person who's only interested in the size of their bank accounts without caring whom their actions hurt. It goes without saying that he's racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. That is a pretty standard trait of Republicans, so I see him as normal in that regards. I think Trump knows that what's really important to the common Republican voter is the protection of the privileges they have always received from being "White". The conservative party in this country (be it yesterday's Democrats or today's Republicans) have always been about white supremacy and its maintenance - by promising to protect white skin privilege, the elite white people offer a bargain with other whites (basically "We know you're not rich, but at least you're white and that counts for something" to keep them pacified. Trump understands this very well and he used it to secure many of his primary votes. You see Democrats often arguing to Republicans that they are voting against their interests (which they really are), but their primary interest is maintaining white supremacy and there are very real benefits for them in seeing that it's maintained.
I highly doubt Trump really intends to build a wall across the US/Mexican border, or try to ban all Muslims from entering the country. I think this is just the stupid stuff he says to illiterate racists because he knows they'll believe (when he stated that he could stand in the middle of Manhattan and shoot someone dead and still get votes, he was pretty much acknowledging his strategy). He's already been trying to walk some of those comments so that he can be more acceptable to the Republican Establishment, the ones whose financial backing he'll need going forward.
Yes, if given the opportunity, he'll appoint one or more right-wing ideologues to the Supreme Court, but many Democrats act as if the Supreme Court hasn't already had a conservative majority for quite a while (and Antonin Scalia was about as hardcore right-wing as you can get) so I don't think people should vote out fear of a conservative court. It was a conservative SCOTUS that upheld the ACA, and the biggest challenges to the legality of abortion are coming at the state level (and being vigorously fought against in courts). We've survived eight years of a very right-wing, neoconservative administration and we can surely survive four years of Trump, especially if people get fired up in open opposition to him.
He, like Hillary, will be an ally to big business and their desires for more power and less regulation, so I don't really see him as any worse than she in this regards. Trump has questioned the necessity of NATO in foreign affairs (I personally think NATO should have been disbanded when the USSR dissolved) and Hillary wants to attack and threaten to attack everyone - to me, she'll be just bad in terms of foreign policy. She has a lot of experience doing very bad things internationally, and that's not experience we should tout in my opinion.
Between the three candidates still in the race, Bernie is the odd man out, offering something completely different from the other two. Things will not get any better under Trump or Hillary.