Will Trump Be GOP's Ralph Nader?

[Parsad]

If Trump runs as an independent, and unemployment continues to decrease over the next 8-10 months, I'm betting that Obama gets re-elected.  Just when everyone thought that Herman Cain was the worst thing that could happen to American politics, and nothing could top Sarah Palin!  ;D  Cheers!

 

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/23/trump-dumps-gop/?hpt=hp_t3

[Parsad]

Peter...you're fired as CEO!  How dare you say Trump is just pretending to run.  He's worth $7B!  His daughter thinks he'll be a great president.  And no president in recent history has hair like that...the only one that came close was Kim Jong-Il on a windy day.  Cheers!

[BargainValueHunter]

Sad that in the world's most powerful nation Trump is given ANY serious attention. American national politics is going through a clownish phase.

[abcd]

But to justify the subject of this thread, shouldn't he get something like 2.8 million votes? Do you think it is possible?

[Packer16]

I hope not.  Anything would be better than a guy who does not understand compromise and how the US system works.  Another 4 years of this lack of leadership will be a killer.  Give someone else a shot who has a better chance at compromise.

 

Packer

[netnet]

Anything would be better than a guy who does not understand compromise and how the US system works.  Another 4 years of this lack of leadership will be a killer.  Give someone else a shot who has a better chance at compromise.

 

Surely you jest. 

 

You may not like him or his policies, but for my tastes he has compromised way tooooooo much!  The repubs think they can roll him on anything, and they often do.  He proposes health insurance--the republican model of 1992 without a single payer option that would be cheaper--overhead of 4% versus existing 10% and his is excoriated as being a commie pinko socialist. (this with a whole raft of ex-Goldman types in the administration), etc., etc.

 

Unfortunately the repubs have guaranteed that the system will not work.

[Packer16]

I do not jest.  If this guy were the head of any company in company or organization he would gone long ago.  Just compare his results to ideologically similar folks like Bill Clinton and you can see how short he falls versus a skilled leader.  This blame the other guy strategy is like a CEO blaming everything else but his own failings for underperformance.  I am surprised how many chances this guy has been given and he has blown most of them. 

I think his main issue is that he makes his decisions as though there is no opposition which is understandable given his experience in Illinois.  He did not have to compromise and compromise was a sign of weakness.  However, to run the US comprise is a strength.  His partisan rhetoric also welcomes an equally extreme opposition rhetoric.  As a supporter of his policies aren't you disappointed in his lack of skill?  I agree that the Repubs have been giving him a hard time but that is what the opposition is suppose to do.  His reaction, fight then give in is his weakness and he has done nothing to change that.  So his strategy is to make folks feel sorry for him.  This only works a few times.  The most common alternative is to develop relationships with the opposition which he has not.  Ronald Reagan's first few weeks in office was doing just that.  Calling the opposition folks and developing a relationship with them.  Unless Obama does something similar it will be a disaster.  The time to develop relationships is not in the heat of a battle that is the time you call on previously developed relationships to forge compromises.  I just do not know how he can answer the question better than Romney that he has worked together with others who think different than him.

 

 

Packer

[RichardGibbons]

Netnet, yeah, that's pretty clear to anyone who looks at the evidence. 

 

That said, in a way, Packer is right -- Obama hasn't done a great job.  His main problem was that he was negotiating in good faith, and starting from a position that should be acceptable to both parties.  Instead, he should have recognized a bit sooner that the Republicans weren't negotiating in good faith.  So, his strategy should have been to take an unreasonable position from the start, so that he could have more point to concede.  In that way, the Republicans could have claimed a victory, but the results would have been what Obama actually wanted from the start.

 

That said, Obama does deserve some leeway.  It wasn't at all clear from the start that the Republicans' only goal would be to oppose anything that was proposed.  And, one should generally assume from the start that you're working with someone who's negotiating in good faith, rather than assuming that they don't actually have principles, but are just being obstructionist.  But he should have figured out much faster that the Republicans' primary goal isn't to achieve the most beneficial outcome for the nation.

[netnet]

Richard,

 

Couldn't have said it better myself, with the only addition being that Obama should have controlled the narrative by framing the issues so that the electorate could understand the issues broadly and in context.  (That and demanding that the CEO's and boards leave their firms as a condition of the bailouts!)