{"id":30281,"date":"2020-02-03T06:20:23","date_gmt":"2020-02-03T11:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angry.net\/blog2\/?p=30281"},"modified":"2022-08-19T15:56:35","modified_gmt":"2022-08-19T19:56:35","slug":"talk-about-getting-it-really-wrong-on-trump-and-brexit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angry.net\/blog2\/?p=30281","title":{"rendered":"Talk about getting it really wrong on Trump and Brexit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good day all. This story has been making the rounds the last few days and generating much mirth and amusement. The story was written in June 2016 and announced that Donald Trump wouldn\u2019t be elected and that Brexit would never happen.<\/p>\n

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Obviously, this bozo\u2019s crystal ball wasn\u2019t working very well. As we know, Friday, January 31st<\/sup>, 2020, Great Britain pulled out of the European Union and once again became a free and sovereign nation. Donald Trump was elected to the office of President of the United States November 8th<\/sup>, 2016. Since this guy got it wrong so badly, people started reposting his prediction. Here it is with commentary from Yours Truly from the NewStatesmanAmerica<\/b><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Calm down. Trump won\u2019t be President \u2013 and Britain won\u2019t leave the EU. <\/b>The nightmare of a Trump presidency and a Brexit vote ain\u2019t gonna happen, says Ian Leslie<\/a>. <\/b><\/p>\n

I<\/b>t is the season of bed-wetting<\/a>. For those who follow politics closely \u2013 we anxious few \u2013 every new poll, whether from the UK or the US, is arriving freighted with apocalyptic significance. <\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that the stakes are high. In five months\u2019 time, we could be standing among the smoking ruins of liberal democracy. The Trump coat of arms will be emblazoned on the dome of the Capitol. The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, will be making tinny jokes about bulldogs as Vladimir Putin moves tanks to the Finnish border. <\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now recall, this was written on June 7th<\/sup>, 2016. The Brexit vote hadn\u2019t happened yet. Boris Johnson, at the time a minister of Parliament, was a big booster of the vote. Prime Minister David Cameron bet his political life on the voters wanting to stay enslaved to the Brussels bureaucrats. It was assumed that Boris Johnson would be the next Prime Minister if Brexit passed.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the post-war order may be looking remarkably intact, Britain having voted emphatically to Remain, a liberal Atlanticist with unexciting ideas installed in the Oval Office, and the England football team having returned home from France after three matches of unbearable mediocrity.<\/b><\/p>\n

As I recall, the polls in Britain had Remain well ahead. In the United States, the polls had Felonia von Pantsuit well ahead going into the Democrat Convention. At about this time, Donald Trump had just about sewed up the nomination, and Jeb! Bush had spectacularly flamed out, spending over $100 million dollars for no wins. There was discussion of the GOP establishment taking the nomination away from Trump and giving it to someone like Mittens Romney. I can\u2019t speak to the English football, (What normal people call soccer), teams.<\/p>\n

I think the second of these scenarios is much more likely. I won\u2019t detain you with my analysis of England\u2019s problems at the back, but let me explain why I think Clinton will win and Britain will vote to stay In. <\/b><\/p>\n

Ian Leslie wrote a few paragraphs explaining why he was reticent in writing this piece. Basically, he didn\u2019t think it would be all that great a topic. Since he never thought that Brexit would happen or that Donald Trump would win the election, I can see why he thought that. Of course, I also don\u2019t think he expected this story to be making the rounds in 2020 as Great Britain pulled out of the EU and President Trump was beginning his preparation for reelection.<\/p>\n

Anyway, to America first. Two significant things have happened since Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination. The first is that senior Republican figures have slunk into line behind him with a surprising \u2013 even for them \u2013 lack of forethought. The second, and more significant development is that, despite this, Trump has got more, not less, Trumpy. <\/b><\/p>\n

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A couple of months ago, the smart thing to say (and I said it myself) was this: \u201cHe may seem crazy but that\u2019s for show. Once he gets the nomination he\u2019ll pivot. He\u2019ll drop all that stuff about a wall. He\u2019ll stop with the racist batshittery. He will acquire the aura of a plausible president.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nope, he didn\u2019t, and the reason was simple. He wasn\u2019t looking for the votes of people like you, the globalist open borders types. He was interviewing with real people, and they liked what he had to say. Why? Because he was thinking exactly like we were.<\/p>\n

Er, no. In the last two weeks Trump has viciously and repeatedly abused a Mexican-American judge, who ruled against him on a law suit concerning his fraudulent \u2018university\u2019, as being unfit to pass judgement because he has Mexican parents. The very definition of racism. He followed that up by referring to a supporter as \u201cmy African-American\u201d<\/a> \u2013 pretty much the dumbest thing a white American can say. Those senior Republicans who, like Paul Ryan, trusted they would civilize the savage, are already looking foolish. So are those of us who thought there was a Trump beyond the Trump we have. <\/b><\/p>\n

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Paul Ryan did try to knife Donald Trump back in October. It didn\u2019t work and Ryan is out of office and no where to be seen, considered to be a failed speaker of the house.<\/p>\n

I think Josh Marshall is right<\/a>, and that Trump is essentially trapped inside his own invective. The more violently he attacks Clinton, the more unstable and unlikeable he seems. He does not have a plan B. He is not thinking coolly or strategically. He is a dyspeptic gorilla in a cage, and on the evidence of a very effective opening salvo<\/a>, Clinton knows exactly how and what to poke through the bars. <\/b><\/p>\n

I followed the link to this Josh Marshall\u2019s story. It was about typical for that time, believing that the polls were accurate. I also looked him up on Wikipedia and yes, he is a hard left barking Moonbat.<\/p>\n

\"Barking<\/a><\/p>\n

Electorally, that means that Trump is not going to expand his appeal greatly beyond his existing constituency. Of course, he will pick up some of the Republicans who didn\u2019t vote for him in the primary but will take the party line whoever the candidate, especially when the alternative is Hillary Clinton. But he won\u2019t make in-roads into independents, among whom he only gets more unpopular, the more they see of him.<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Boy when you get it wrong, you get it really wrong. Hillary Clinton was in a photo finish with a criminal investigation. The only reason she wasn\u2019t indicted was the blatant white washing of the case against her. She was a horrible campaigner, she insulted everyone who disagreed with her, (Which was over half the country), and quickly earned the sobriquet \u201cFelona von Pantsuit\u201d for her corrupt dealings as Secretary of State. About this time, it also came out that she had rigged the Democrat primaries to sink Comrade Bernie Sanders.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He certainly won\u2019t make progress with non-white voters. If he wins as many Hispanic and black votes as Romney did \u2013 and he very probably won\u2019t \u2013 he\u2019ll have to win nearly two thirds of white voters to get to a majority. I just don\u2019t think there are nearly enough angry racist white men in America to get him to the White House. <\/b><\/p>\n

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Nice going Moonbat. You just showed the world who the real racists are. It\u2019s Progressives such as yourself. In any case, President Trump did very ok with the Hispanic vote, and the black vote stayed home. This time around, he\u2019s picking up a lot of the voters that the Democrats believed were their property. Funny how getting pretty much everyone who wants a job, a job, and not the phony jobs Liberals come up with.<\/p>\n

It will soon become apparent that the big mistake of this whole electoral cycle was not, \u201cWe had no idea how popular Trump could be.\u201d It was, \u201cWe had no idea how removed a large segment of the core GOP electorate has become from the rest of the nation.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

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By the end of this campaign I suspect Trump will regret ever having got into politics. Even if he only loses by a few points, his name will be permanently toxified. His TV career will be in jeopardy, as will his property business, which is dependent on his personal brand. In fact, I\u2019m still not entirely sure that he is going to be on the ballot come November – he may engineer his own departure from the race. <\/b><\/p>\n

Boy did you miss the target. Like your candidate, Felonia von Pantsuit, along with everyone since, you were to busy eating brie and drinking Chablis with like minded nitwits to see what Donald Trump had discovered. Americans were furious at the Globalist elites that had destroyed their livelihoods and were actively working to destroy the United States. I wonder how that crow must be tasting right about now?<\/p>\n

But wait! There\u2019s more! Now we move on to Brexit.<\/p>\n

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The golden rule of politics is that most voters don\u2019t care about politics. Everything follows from this first principle. <\/b><\/p>\n

Since most voters don\u2019t care about politics, and don\u2019t want to have to care about politics, they vote for the option that presents the least hassle, the least risk, and the least politics.<\/b><\/p>\n

That is not entirely accurate, as you found out a couple of weeks later.<\/p>\n

This immediately makes the sovereignty argument irrelevant, and possibly counter-productive. People are not longing for more democracy, because more democracy sounds suspiciously like more politics. And even the Brexiteers cannot conceal that the process of untangling ourselves from the EU will take years. That\u2019s to say, it will involve more politics. <\/b><\/p>\n

Oh I love that part, \u201cPeople are not longing for more democracy.\u201d Yes, the serfs really don\u2019t want to think for themselves. They want an elite few, such as, oh I don\u2019t know, Ian Leslie, to think for them. Spoken like a true elitist with no idea what is actually happening.<\/p>\n

There is no powerful countervailing drive to \u201cdo something\u201d. To state the obvious, this referendum was not called because of some great national upswell of anti-EU sentiment. Despite the best efforts of the Daily Mail, most people do not feel assailed or constrained by European bureaucrats in their everyday lives. To most people, the EU is an abstract, faintly comic entity, good for the occasional joke about odd shaped fruit, but that\u2019s it.<\/b><\/p>\n

Actually, they did feel constrained and they were being constrained. Entire fishing villages were basically destroyed thanks to bureaucrats in Brussels telling the British fishermen they couldn\u2019t catch fish in their own waters, and had to let the Spanish do it instead. There were hundreds of other little things that drove most Brits nuts when it came to dealing with the EU. When the referendum was proposed, they jumped at it.<\/p>\n

Many voters are opposed to immigration, and this is where the Leave campaign or campaigns is\/are, quite sensibly, focusing. But as Atul Hatwal shows<\/a>, immigration is more bark than bite: most voters who think immigration is an important issue for the nation don\u2019t think it is crucial to them and their families. <\/b><\/p>\n

The problem wasn\u2019t so much immigration as to who was being let in. The major problem are the Muslims. Not all of them to be sure, but the ones who refuse to assimilate and instead were bound and determined to impose Islam on everyone in Great Britain. Then we have the cases where \u201cAsians\u201d, (FYI, there is a major difference in who Americans consider to be Asian and who the British consider to be Asian. We don\u2019t consider Arabs or Pakistanis, (And Indians for that matter), to be Asian), were taking adolescent girls as young as 12 and grooming them to be sex slaves. It didn\u2019t help matters that local officials turned a blind eye to the crimes and actually went after people reporting them. Those two things helped push people to support Brexit. They wanted control of Immigration returned to their own corrupt bureaucrats.<\/p>\n

Once you see that this is really all about the economy, and that most voters use their vote to minimise risk and hassle, then you\u2019ll see why I\u2019m confident about a win for Remain. <\/b><\/p>\n

Obviously, you were only talking with people in \u201cThe City<\/a>\u201d and not out in places like Manchester or Birmingham.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll also feel more relaxed about how David Cameron or Michael Gove does in a TV interview that hardly anyone who hasn\u2019t already made up their minds is watching (incidentally, commentators are wrong to conclude that if Gove answers all the questions in an interview brilliantly and wittily his side wins. Forget about the words. The more Michael Gove is on TV, the better for Remain). <\/b><\/p>\n

As an American, I have no idea who Michael Gove<\/a> is. I had to look him up on Wikipedia. According to Wiki, he was and is a major booster of Brexit. David Cameron was not. He\u2019s still in office and apparently doing very well with Prime Minister Johnson, and David Cameron, isn\u2019t. Put that in your crack pipe and smoke Ian.<\/p>\n

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The voters who haven\u2019t already made up their mind are doing all they can to avoid having to think about this referendum. When they finally, reluctantly turn their minds to it, the golden rule will kick in.<\/b><\/p>\n

Apparently, they weren\u2019t reluctant at all. They just didn\u2019t tell anyone until the polls opened.<\/p>\n

If the polls show a consistent and sizeable lead for Leave for a seven day stretch, I may revise my priors<\/a> – in normal language, panic. <\/b>But until then: calm down, dears.<\/b><\/p>\n

Well now, I don\u2019t recall how the polls were prior to the Brexit vote, but I think they weren\u2019t all that different from the American polls just prior to the presidential election, in other words, absolutely useless. While I didn\u2019t see the reactions of the remainers on the BBC, I have seen the reactions of the moonbats of MSNBC, CNN and the other networks, (Except Fox). Basically, they all looked like this:<\/p>\n