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CPUd
01-20-2017, 05:30 PM
Trump's Uneasy Gamble
The 45th President’s inaugural address encapsulated the risky gamble the Republican Party is taking on his combative approach

Donald Trump’s combative and confrontational speech, unusual for an inaugural address, encapsulated the defining political gamble he is presenting to a Republican Party still uneasily settling into his harness.

Trump’s narrow victory last November pushed at every fault line in American politics, sharply dividing the country along lines of race, generation, education and geography. His inaugural address, centered on disdain for “the establishment” and political leadership, showed that he remains committed to a course that is more likely to deepen than narrow those divides––a dynamic underscored by the virtually unprecedented protests that erupted just beyond the inaugural parade route on Friday.

In his address, Trump offered a definition of his presidency that spoke directly to the anxieties of his uneasy electoral coalition centered on the non-college educated and non-urban whites that supported him in record numbers. But the speech may also strike those more optimistic about the direction of American life as too grim, divisive, insular, and backward looking.

By framing his presidency in such stark terms, Trump is committing the Republican Party to a high-stakes political bet: that he can squeeze more advantage out of that first group, which has been shrinking as a share of the electorate, than he will lose from the second, which includes the constituencies that have been growing most rapidly-Millennials, minorities and college-educated whites, particularly women.

“I don’t doubt that there’s a chunk of folks out there who will lap it up,” said Democratic pollster Guy Molyneux, who specializes in studying opinions among the white working class. “But it struck me as too negative, too harsh to really broaden the appeal.”

With few of the rhetorical flourishes common to these addresses, and only glancing gestures toward unity, Trump echoed his major campaign themes to present himself as the champion of “the forgotten men and women of our country” against elites at home and abroad that he said had produced an “American carnage” with “factories scattered like tombstones” and cities reeling under “crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives.”

Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” it was not.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/trumps-uneasy-gamble/513998/

angelatc
01-20-2017, 06:00 PM
That speech was a direct shot at every former president sitting behind him. The popularity game ended when he won the election. Now apparently he doesn't care what anybody thinks of him, and he doesn't think highly of any of them.


It didn't last but for a brief moment I had hope.

Zippyjuan
01-20-2017, 06:12 PM
On taking office, all presidents tell us how great things will be. But their real power to make things truely much better are very limited. They can only make marginal change at best and are at the mercy of other events in the country and the world. What they do have unlimited power to do is make things worse. No matter who wins, I only hope they don't use this latter power. If they make any improvements, we appreciate them. But if they decided to comm (or accidentally cause to happen) bad events, look out. I only hope they don't screw things up too badly.

NorthCarolinaLiberty
01-20-2017, 06:14 PM
The exact same arguments were used against Reagan. The rap on Reagan was that he turned back the clock to the 1950s. Reagan appealed to white working class men who had been supplanted in the steel, auto, and other industries. Reagan was criticized for rolling back civil rights. Reagan was big on the military, just like Don. Reagan was also seen as an extremist. Reagan was hated by a lot of people.

And Reagan also promised to "make America great again."


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Let%27s_Make_America_Great_Again_button.jpeg/800px-Let%27s_Make_America_Great_Again_button.jpeg