BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

I hear that there are several outside party candidates, since so many people seem so distressed about either of the main offerings, why is nothing at all being heard about the outsiders in the running?

For many reasons, Trump is done. But we do polls on everything it seems, and I would like to know how Trump scores with parents of teens or pre-teens. I am thinking the answer might be very bad for Trump.

What started this latest round of one-upsmanship? Why release those tapes of DT's candid comments? Hillary surely knew that it would affect the debate, divert attention and... divert it from what exactly? It wouldn't have anything to do with Friday's wikileaks release of Podesta's (her campaign manager) emails containing transcripts of Hillary's private speeches to bankers (a couple of years ago and not 11 years ago like DT) about her globalizing agenda, would it?

Hillary repudiated that agenda to entice Bernie's supporters to vote for her. But she never wanted to release transcripts of those meetings. Part of the wikileak included tactics to disparage Rep candidates....2 years ago! List included Trump. What a surprise...NOT.

Part of the wikileak included tactics to disparage Rep candidates....2 years ago! List included Trump. What a surprise...NOT.

No matter who wins the election, this undignified spectacle over the months causes considerable damage to the image of the land which claims worldwide leadership.

What do you think she should have said?

When I spoke to her over the Fourth of July weekend in 2015 in New Hampshire, Clinton had clearly been thinking about the impact of new technology on human development and how people communicate. We were talking about mental health and substance abuse, two issues that a lot of voters in New Hampshire were raising with her. She described a meeting with a group that had developed online mental-health programs. One woman predicted to her that a big challenge in mental health over the coming years would be “how to undo the damage that the internet has caused young people.”

It’s striking to me now that Clinton’s main interest in these new media technologies was not so much as a political tool but as a policy concern for the citizenry. Clinton described “the insidious, pernicious comparisons” that online communities can foster in young people, and the temptation to “put out an identity online before it’s ever formed” in real life. Thinking about this exchange 14 months later, after what feels like a generation’s worth of lines crossed and taboos shattered, her concern seems strangely prescient.

Trump, of course, both shares and feeds his audience’s addiction to stimuli and entertainment. Early in the campaign, during the Republican primaries, he would pretty much say yes to anyone who wanted to put him on TV or in a magazine. He was indefatigable in reaching out to reporters, lobbying for coverage. He can be undeniably fun and, to a point, seductive. My first encounter with Trump, more than a year ago, came in an unsolicited note that said simply, “Mark, It’s Time for a Cover!”

Clinton, on the other hand, proceeds with immense caution. When we first spoke last July, she agreed to our meeting on the maddening proposition that we do it off the record. I went along, reluctantly, as it was my only entree (she agreed later to put parts of it on the record). Her hesitancy to give interviews and allow media access has barely subsided over time. When I asked Robby Mook, Clinton’s 36-year-old campaign manager, how his candidate had adapted to the insane rules of engagement that this campaign has “normalized” (to use a 2016 buzzword), he essentially said that she hadn’t. “Hillary approaches this campaign through the portal of wanting to fix problems,” Mook told me. “And so politics for her is, first and foremost, not an exercise in communicating to the masses. It’s about finding the right solution and then going after it.”

Clinton is, in other words, the anti-Trump. She is not a political novelty, nor is she especially entertaining as a media personality or in front of big groups. She and her campaign know this and have been smart about not pretending otherwise. Trump’s big shadow and outrage machine have even allowed her to become slightly and perhaps blissfully lost; to fade, if not into obscurity, at least into a background that cuts the glare of the scrutiny to which she has been so averse. In a sense, she is daring voters to study her positions, listen to her answers and not look to her for entertainment or emotional impact. In 2016, that can seem almost risky.

“I’ve laid out all of these policies, and look, people kind of made fun of it, because ‘Oh, there she goes with another policy,’ ” Clinton told me. “I’m trying to run a campaign that presents an alternative case.” It’s telling that a candidate with the name recognition, résumé and baggage of Hillary Clinton is nonetheless left to present her campaign as an “alternative case.”

“My husband and I laugh sometimes about the ‘Antiques Roadshow,’ ” Clinton told me, referring to the PBS show about antique appraisers that she watches devoutly. “Sometimes we feel like we are the antiques on a roadshow when it comes to politics.”

I think that having a land claim worldwide leadership does more harm to its image than everything else put together.

After mulling this over for awhile, I still don't see that "He's a good promoter" has a negative connotation. Trump is in fact a good promoter and promoting is a useful skill. I must be missing something here, but am not sure what.

On some level, he did it by outsourcing the job. Trump and his first wife, Ivana, left their young children in the care of two Irish nannies and, for a time, their maternal grandparents, before sending the kids off to boarding school (Eric and Donald Jr. to the Hill School; Ivanka to Choate). “My father is a very hardworking guy, and that’s his focus in life, so I got a lot of the paternal attention that a boy wants and needs from my grandfather,” Donald Jr. told New York Magazine in 2004.

Reality show, indeed.
Media specialty after all.

Every time emails are leaked, new allegations surface.
Buckle up, there is more to come.

I have long felt that under no circumstance should a person ever pay the slightest bit of attention to anything that is said in the last couple of weeks.

Gone and emphatically, clearly, beyond question gone. It's important.

FWIW, I don't believe that Trump is a real racist or "ethnicity-ist". I don't think he gives a BEEP.

I believe Trump is a media-ist and a populist. He knows that his potential voters are racist, so he will say racist things that his electorate thinks are funny or need to be said.