Well now that the 2020 election is fully underway, Trump and the GOP have found their campaign feet and are briskly making their way toward retaking all three branches of the US government. They have a serial liar in the Whitehouse, a spineless conniving majority leader in the Senate who values his own political skin and that of his party over the constitution and the good of the nation and they will have to engineer a massive rebound from their crushing 2018 defeat in the house. So you might ask: To what do they owe their confidence for 2020? It could be just bottomless arrogance and optimism. But no, they have a clever strategy, devised by no other than Individual #1 himself. The GOP has no platform to promote, no new ideas to inspire the nation and no track record they can defend outside of their country club meetings. What they have is this irresistible formula for success. Read closely and remember you read it here first.
1) Anything the Democrats think, say or do is SOCIALISM.
2) Venezuela is a SOCIALIST state and is currently dissolving into chaos
3) Therefore the US will become the next Venezuela immediately upon the election of any Democrats into office anywhere within the US.
You can see the infallibility of this strategy, the Democrats will be decimated or worse in 2020 if the GOP simply repeats these lines until we can all hear them in our sleep.
Except for a few inconvenient facts.
Venezuela's President Maduro is no more a socialist than is Donald Trump. Sure he likes to talk up how he supports the people over the big bad corporations and the elite who would otherwise steal the Nation's wealth for themselves. Meanwhile Maduro and his cronies are stealing the Nation's wealth while denying the people even basic food and medical aid from the rest of the world. If Venezuela is to be summed up in one word it is "Kleptocracy" - a nation in which a small group of well connected people run the nation solely for the purpose of enriching themselves.
The Democrats have not announced any "Socialist" ideas. Every other major world economy has some form of "Medicare for all", most of those nations are not Socialist. Most of the word is still participating in the Paris Climate Accord, again few of them are Socialist. Tax policies that do not overwhelmingly favor the rich are also a feature of quite a few nations that are not socialist.
The US economy is huge and is governed by 51 different democratically elected governmental bodies, each with its own checks and balances built in to prevent even the most determined kleptocrats from ruining the nation and its economy. Not even the predations of the current kleptocrats in the Whitehouse will reduce the US to the level of chaos currently seen in Venezuela, even if they blunder into a second term.
If all the GOP can do is campaign against those "Socialists" while wrapping themselves in a constitution they have never actually read they are doomed to defeat in 2020. Lets hope it is an ass kicking of such magnitude that it renders the Republican Party asunder and dumps it on the ash heap of history.
Sounds pretty ridiculous for me.... I hope you're not serious otherwise the USA is really in trouble from any political point of view.
I wish I wasn't. Last week's news featured quite a bit of GOP bashing of Democrats for their "Socialism" while at the same time pointing to Maduro's kleptocracy as the natural outcome of Democratic proposals. It was only pushed off the airwaves by this week's failure in Hanoi and Michael Cohen's testimony. The GOP is out of gas for any ideas to deal with climate change and the economic dislocations of automation. They deny the former and ignore the latter in favor of blaming foreign trade for "stealing" US jobs.
One question to get what you mean: Did you vote for Trump?
No.
Because he is part of a bigger agenda ? Or you didn't like the goals he was elected for and now he is trying to hold his word? (As stupid as that is :/ )
The man is a disgrace to the Office of the President. He ran a vanity campaign with no expectation that he would actually win. Why he did that is known only to him. He has no coherent, reality based agenda save to enrich himself. His goals are simplistic to the point of being ridiculous. "Make America Great Again"? - America was, is and will be great no matter what Trump does, unless the GOP continues to ignore the very real threat he poses to American interests and the rule of law in America. I understand that some Americans are so angry or frustrated with Government that they see in Trump an opportunity to shake up the system. Trump certainly can do that because he simply does not care about the consequences of his actions as long as he gets a "win" and lines his pockets. Read "The Fifth Risk" by Michael Lewis. I had some prior knowledge of what he writes before the book came out. Michael Lewis got it right.
Any moron can tear down a system if he doesn't care what happens next. Trump is that moron. What America needs is a man who can build a better system to improve the one that exists. Trump is not that person.
We can definitely agree on that! I meanTrump did it for his ego I guess ... We will see who used him well only in the long run ... Maybe really russia?! :/ for so long the USA haven't been too great for a few years now so also can't blame trump for that! We will see what happens next ... I still hope for an impeachment before any war starts.
Trump won't start a war - too bad for his business. If he starts investing in the military industrial complex (MIC) we should all watch out. But even that would be risky. A major war between the US and any peer would be short and nasty until either or both sides ran out of their highly expensive high tech weaponry, then it would continue as either Nuclear or conventional but at a level driven more by the production rate for weapons and ammo. The MIC would be very profitable in the long run but the short run risks are extreme. A low level war such as invading Venezuela won't make enough profit, but could be considered a diversion from his other troubles.
As for impeachment, that would put Mike Pence in charge. Trump appalls me but Pence scares the daylights out of me. Anyone who claims that it is "God's plan" for him to be President might also consider that his role as President is to initiate the Rapture. Nuclear buttons are very handy for that. The smartest thing Trump ever did during his campaign was to appoint a VP with even less appeal than him. Hard to do but Pence is it.
My preferred strategy would be to investigate and build the case for impeachment but time the proceedings so that they are overtaken by the 2020 election. That way Trump is either primaried by a more reasonable Republican (Kasich or Hogan come to mind) or the GOP gets crushed by a general revulsion over Trump and the GOP's tolerance of him.