2016 U.S. Presidential Race Megathread Mark 2.

Manic Moran wrote: »

>There are legitimate questions that need to be asked about how democratic the US actually is.

Why is this a legitimate question? Anyone who has any knowledge of the US system knows it's a representative confederated republic, and they deliberately shied away from simple democracy. It's as democratic as the EU is.

Are you seriously suggesting that some questions are legitimate, and that other questions are to be placed in a special category and deemed illegitimate? Because, if you are, that, I'm afraid, is a thought process which, if taken to its logical conclusion, ends in fascism.

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

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You see this is the part I don't get and its the part that another poster referred to when she/he said (and I'm paraphrasing here) they love this board because even though people were wrong in their assessment of the lie of the land in the US they still believe they were right.

Trump has made two public appearances since he won the election.

The first time was his victory speech, which most people here expected to be a ungracious gloat, it wasn't, it was as well delivered as anything you would get from Clinton or Obama.

The other was his visit to the White House, again people were expecting, hopeing perhaps, that of would be a mess and Trump look bad, but again they were wrong, Trump was there for 90 minutes and came out singing the prases of Obama etc.

And now we have this, some hypothetical assessment that armed milita would be mobilised if he lost.
Trump would have done none of that, nor would his supporters.

Its BS of the highest order, and its only a smoke screen because people hete are embarrassed by these "Not my president" fools.
Rather than condemn them they come up with some hypothetical "whataboutery" about Trump losing.

Trump is one of the sharpest tools in the box, but people are afraid to admit that.

He said it was rigged if he didn't win and his supporters were talking about armed revolution. I'm sure they wouldn't have done it due to a lack of balls but people aren't creating the idea out of thin air, it comes directly from what his supporters said. Glad to see you think his supporters are full of it!

RobertKK wrote: »

A CNN exit poll showed:
46% wanted the next president to be more conservative.
18% more liberal
Most of the rest wanted something similar to Obama.

Trump will put conservative judges on the Supreme Court which is good.
When it comes to illegal immigrants, there are rules and regulations there for a reason. The people who make excuses for these people, would you like thousands of illegals entering Ireland and we not knowing who they are? A country should know who is inside their borders. Trump has a responsibility to deal with it.
Obama's administration has been kicking out lots of illegals, but Trump seemed to have the backing of the people who deal with immigration, as it is a problem.
He needs to see what can and cannot be done.
Ahortion should be restricted.
He needs to do away with Obamacare for something that is affordable and works.
There is already a wall along some parts of the Mexican border, given people were arrested in Mexico who were not Mexican but who were terrorists looking to enter the US via the border, there is a case that something more secure is needed.

I like how Jake Tapper on CNN yesterday said Trump believes the US got involved in too many countries abroad militarily, which many veterans agreed with, but Hillary didn't.
I feel the US has made many situations worse rather than better by the use of military in recent times. So if Trump pulls away from neocon policy, he could become a good president. He has a lot of messes that are there today from people who actively supported neocon policy, that need to be cleaned up which has made the terrorism problem far worse.

As one of the more active Trump supporters (or in your case, anti-Clinton advocates I guess is more accurate! ), thanks for giving a fairly detailed and direct answer. I waited for the reply to see if any other Trump fans knew what they wanted from him as president, I'll post that again in a few hours in case some missed it as unless I missed any, you were the only one to do so.



My issue with the illegal immigrants idea is less to do with the humanitarian aspect which will always be divisive, but more of a pragmatic one - a lot of these people work in skilled roles, and so like-for-like replacement is not going to be a realistic option quite regularly. Furthermore, while I understand the issue regarding how illegal immigrants impact wages, getting rid of them all ASAP rather than over a longer period of time present a big problem, as companies then have to pay their staff substantially more or so bust, which can have a knock of effect. Take construction for example, known to have a larger level of illegals than both - if a company is in the process of doing a renovation job/extension/etc let's say to a restaurant, but all of a sudden lose a chunk of their workforce (illegals), they either go bust or have to pay new (legal) staff significantly more. Now 'fair enough, tough on them' you might say - but the issue then becomes what happens in either scenario?

In the first where they go bust, their legal workforce are also left out of a job which means where you had let's say 15 members of staff plus the owner, 11 of whom were legal and 4 illegal, you lose anywhere from 12-16 sources of income tax (many illegals do pay taxes) and replace it with 12 people on welfare, which is clearly a large net loss when multiplied out across the country.

In the second instance where they replace their illegal staff with legal staff, they then either go bust anyway or have to significantly increase the cost of their services in order to stay afloat. Before getting into the issue of how affordable (or unaffordable) this becomes for those needing construction jobs done, it also creates the issue... what about the cafe/restaurant? They're left with a half complete job that they cannot afford to have finished, which is a major problem for a business that could threaten the jobs of all the people working their also if they cannot afford to pay the increased amount. On top of that, service industries like that also have a high number of illegals, so if they had a few they would also need to replace them all with legal staff, thus making it harder again for them to keep afloat before even factoring that in. Either the construction company or the restaurant going bust is very likely to cause the other to do so as well, doubling the impact of creating a dangerous domino effect. Either way, they are very likely going to need to pass this increased cost on to the customer which leads to a lot of complaints about the cost of living compared to wages and so on.

I don't necessarily mind someone saying to get rid of 10.9mn illegal immigrants (8.3mn in work from what I have read), so much as I think looking to do so in the space of four years or less is a very dangerous proposition in my opinion, economically speaking. The quite likely end result of this is getting rid of around 8.3mn illegals, and putting many more millions of jobs (on top of those 8.3mn) in very serious jeopardy in order to do so. A net loss of jobs like that in such a short time would be incredibly economically crippling.