I have a violent temper, am mostly incomprehensible, as tight as a ducks chuff, deep fry my heroin and have early symptoms of liver failure. Any good?

Lend me a Tenor

31 May to 3 June 2017

John McIntosh Arts Centre
London Oratory School
SW6 1RX

with Superfly in the chorus
[Link]

Oh yes I would ... it's interesting and baffling from the outside how unpopular Hilary is - she seems different to when hubby was in charge - the accusations of coldness apply to my memory of her, she seemed scarily rational in a very blokish way, this sounds very sexist cos the Mays, Thatchers and Barbara Castles are as rational as any, but there was an unattractive focussed ruthless ambition, exemplified by the way she seemed not to give a sh*t about her husband's away form and seemingly gave status and position far greater priority - all impressions of course but impressions sway voters - there is the 'foundation' of course and it is screamingly obvious she was not just making room in her inbox when deleting those emails. You have to be mightily crap to be second to Trump but her crapness is still hard to fathom this side of the pond - if some American poster could edify that would be good. As far as the comparison with Hitler and Mussolini it's not vague and lazy - I agree with you that the US constitution and culture is too robust to be subordinated to a would be dictator, but it does show you should not always be supine with a democratic choice, George W led a basically criminal regime with the machine of democracy, Mugabe gets elected once every five years or so, so did Napoleon III, and big bad Donald is capable of creating some serious carnage in the next four years - there are times when the democratic choice is deeply flawed, like the election of Hitler and Mussolini, and it's not petty sour grapes to be concerned or anything to do with partisanship, it's disappointment that there are so many people daft enough and ignorant enough to support a wall-building, pussy-grabbing, dangerous, flippant fascist.

Sorry old bean, only just noticed you are American - we hear loads of Americans hate her - and sure the Dems have lost their core support, but why this hatred towards her? I'm not criticising here but you write like someone who is observing from the outside - she looks like a normal bog standard politician from over here, not particularly dislikable like a George Osborne, Mandelson or Mellor - could you enlighten us as to the visceral hate aimed at her - then we can dispense with our silly tit for tat - I enjoy winding up conservatives just as much as some people like winding up liberals - but I will respect your views and would be more than interested if you could shine a bit of light on the Hilary haters.

I am an ex-pat in the US. I grew up in the UK, and emigrated as an adult.

Hillary is not charismatic, and that is a big part of her lack of national appeal. Scandal after scandal has degraded her standing over thirty years in the public eye. She has offered no vision, instead listing policies and plans without really connecting to the average voter. Furthermore, the Democratic party has allowed itself to become dominated by wealthy elites who have little connection to the party's core support. Surprisingly, perhaps, far more Republicans seem at home with poor people than do many top Democrats, and the latter tend to talk down to the working classes: telling what they should and should not want and need. Re. Hillary's "basket of deplorable" comment. That was taken worse than Romney's "40% don't pay tax and won't ever vote Republican" comment. Throw in the fact that she will switch support for issues and ideas at the first sign of unpopularity, and people don't think she can be trusted.

The more recent leaking of emails has not helped, as they have shown many of the assumptions about the Democratic Primaries being rigged against Sanders to be true. The suspicions about her email server look more worrying when emails showing she knew perfectly well why she wanted a private server, came to light. She wanted to hide stuff. Therefore, it is perhaps no surprise that large numbers of Bernie's supporters simply did not vote for her. They wanted change, transparency, honesty, and the best she could offer was more of the same, without the charisma.

The electorate across the political spectrum has been crying out for an outsider for the last dozen years. Witness the Tea Party which started out as a narrow single issue party and grew from there. It was composed of mostly disaffected voters who felt they had been marginalized by the political system. In many ways they were right. When they were spoken to, particularly by the left, they were ridiculed, maligned, and discounted. This last year or two has seen two outsiders do really well in the primaries and election: Sanders and Trump. Much of what they were saying is quite similar: i.e. you've been screwed by the man, DC and the old guard look after their own, I can be your champion.

So, when the election came up, many of my Republican friends decided not to vote, or to vote for a third party candidate as a protest. From the analysis of the election, 5-10m Democrats did not show up to vote. The weather was good, there were no real problems of access to voting, yet they did not show up and support her. Republican numbers were down, but third party candidates got the largest share of the vote in ages. She still failed to win. Not only that, but Republicans now control both houses too. That's a damning indictment of the Democratic party's last eight years.

Economically, the economy is growing very slowly and many of the new jobs are at the lower end of the food chain. Medical costs have gone up massively, and quite a lot of people lost their healthcare coverage because of Obamacare. That has driven up costs for ordinary working people, without solving the problem of lack of health insurance. Thus, there are still many people who are unemployed or underemployed.

The problem of immigration has not gone away, and that has had an effect on wages at the bottom of the scale. Democrats seem to have focused on ethnic minorities and not on blue collar whites. Whether that perception is wholly true, is immaterial. It certainly looks like that.

Add in a focus on things such as transgender rights for kids, etc., and you have a large part of the population wondering what on earth the Democratic party is thinking. It spends a huge amount of time on a few hot button emotive topics whilst not paying attention to Syria, problems with China, Russia, the economy, jobs, immigration, etc. It's no wonder ordinary blue collar voters have stopped voting for them, or for voting for anyone calling for changes in the status quo. As Nickgusset mentioned, Trump and Sanders are similar in many ways.

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Interesting analysis of the most comprehensive exit poll::

[Link]

I get the Sanders and Trump comparison but I can't buy it. You can make a cold policy analysis and I'm sure some of Trump's more outrageous comments were vote-grabbing rhetoric but he radiates irresponsibility and flippancy - his mentality is the worry as much as anything else. But your post is an eye opener esp re Obamacare and the relative success of the independents - isn't it time for a bit of electoral reform here and there? Democracy gets subverted and circumvented and needs a bit of refreshing so the system doesn't get played so much - 51% of votes will have NO voice, no independent representation in congress - if your system gave independents more chance of being represented I would wager they would get significantly more votes. On the downside if we had PR wets like me would have to put up loads of Ukip MPs - God this is tough! And I wonder which independent George W did vote for? Oh and if you fancy Marine Le Pen to become president of France next year the best odds you can get are 2/1 - now that would be a victory for terrorism. And if that happened I would be similarly undemocratic - probably more so.