In 2016, I voted third party. I put some long hours into studying out the “lesser parties”, because I have come to the conclusion that we need more than 2 parties. Whichever one wins, the other digs in to wait for the next cycle, & nothing gets done. With more than 2 parties, coalition governments are formed, which can at least accomplish the work of governing.

As a Mormon, I feel pretty much that we are watching the pride cycle unfold before our eyes. It looks to me like there are Gadianton robbers scattered throughout the government, so voting for someone with mob connections was not something I was going to do. Obviously, Trump is now the President, & like it or not, that makes him my President, just like Obama was my president, like it or not. So I pray that he will be surrounded by good people, who will give him good advice, & that his heart will be softened to follow it. While I do not feel responsible for his policies, watching things unfold on multiple levels has caused me to question exactly what it means to “grind the face of the poor”. How much house do I really need? How many clothes do I really need? Do I really need more “stuff?” Is MY excess consumer buying literally wasting money that could relieve the suffering of the poor around me? Those are questions that only I can answer, because I am the one the Lord will hold responsible for MY conduct. Again, in the pride cycle, I need to remember that everything I have in mortality is not really mine, materially speaking, as I am acting as a steward over what the Lord has given me.

During the election year, & since, I have learned a lot of history about our various presidents. In a nutshell, few of them behaved like angels, which was strangely comforting. However, when Trump hired Reince Priebus, that was my breaking point. Priebus literally sent out underlings in vests to threaten people at the National Republican Convention, & that is too much like Hitler’s brown shirts for me. I feel that the Republican Party has marched over a cliff & I decline to follow. I registered as an Independent voter the day Trump hired Priebus.

I think this is different from supply side economics. One can debate that of course. But thinking someone is wrong is not the same as their following conspiracy like thinking. There were solid economists who accepted supply side thinking although many felt it was applicable in a more narrow range of situations. A problem today is that many on the right assume what worked in one situation would work in any. But it’s not like supply side economics wasn’t solid technical economics promoted by well respected economists like Robert Mundell or Victor Canto.

To the point of media, the NYTs and company are solid. But their right wing comparison is more the WSJ. So let’s compare like to like. For instance I don’t see much difference between say MSNBC, CNN or Fox. Only the type of bias is different. Likewise to me Salon or even HuffPost are giving hugely biased and often misinformed articles or par with biased right wing web sites. So I think comparing “right wing media” to NYT/WaPo is unfair (if that’s what you’re doing – you were pretty vague). Compare like to like. From my perspective the left is about where the right was in 2008. So sadly the right is still ahead of the left in this degradation. But the left seems to be trying to catch up with conspiracy thinking as fast as possible.

I’m not sure what you mean by “best representative.” I don’t consider Trump a conservative.

As for my views, I’m definitely at the “both parties completely suck” stage. I can rant about either party for a long time.

I’ll indulge and respond to a couple of side points: 1) liberal media are far more in line with reason and truth than right-wing propaganda. People who tend to vote Democrat look nothing like those who vote Republican. Conspiracism and outright untruths have been eating the brains of the right far more than the left. Any notion that the left is somehow like the right was 8 years ago is nonsensical false equivalence in the extreme. 2) Like it or not, Trump is the best representative of conservatism and the Republican Party in the US currently. He is the one who got more conservative and GOP votes than anyone else. These supposed untrusting Republicans have mostly fallen in line with his agenda and have done little to challenge it. If you stand for reason, truth, and justice, Clark, you simply shouldn’t be voting for or supporting the GOP. You’re better off with the Democrats.

To give an example of this consider you are a person for whom social issues matter a great deal. Then the Gorsuch appointment is huge for you. We know from the election that among those who didn’t really trust Trump, SCOTUS appointments were one of the biggest reasons they voted for Trump. So in that regard they have to be happy.

I am just far from convinced that Republicans really trust him. I also think that group-identity psychology has a lot to do with how people reaction. Far more than rational weighing of issues. The cognitive scientist Jay Van Bavel has done a lot of interesting work here arguing that many aspects of group-identity are best seen as happening at the perceptual level. There was a fascinating podcast with him a month ago on these issues that is very worth listening to. (Unfortunately they don’t have a transcript). When looking at of people feel about politics I tend to think these group-identity issues dominate. That’s why the swing against Trump by Mormon GOP are so striking. They are reacting against their political identity which takes a fair bit of cognitive effort. That is people are less pro Trump than they are anti anti Trump.

To your other point, of course many people in both parties get distorted views of things from the media they consume. This is hardly just a right wing thing. Indeed as I’ve said many times one thing I fear a lot is that the left is facing the same issues the right faced 8 years ago. The left just was able to avoid them a bit due to having a person in the White House.

Well, it is in my interest to hope that Trump reverses course on his anti-Muslim, anti-poor Latino immigrant, and anti-poor policies. But I’m quite sure that that is a false hope. If by now you think that Trump has done a good job or will do a good job, then you probably live in a distorted right-wing echo chamber, are delusional, and/or are just plain ignorant of the realities at hand.

According to a CNN Poll in November 17-20, only 53% thought that Trump would do a very good or fairly good job. This is contrast with 75% who thought that Obama would do a very good or fairly good job right after the 2008 election (http://www.npr.org/2016/11/22/503032226/polls-suggest-americans-warming-to-donald-trump-but-with-reservations).

My point was that beyond that, though. It was that Mormon Republicans came around to Trump. And there is every indication that they have. Their support for Trump is certainly greater now than it was during the primaries.

What about the rebuttable presumption of support for a candidate idea? is that at least informative as to why people might assume Mormons support Trump, since many (most?) voted for the Republican candidate?

“But politics is very much about image which is why some people who might make great presidents in terms of decision making make bad candidates simply because they do poorly along the political and media aspects of the job. … Clinton was beyond weak but was known to be highly divisive at best. That was known well before she ran as were her email problems and related issues. That’s why many of us thought she was a bad candidate for Democrats to run. While Democratic voters might not to be to blame for that, I think the elite establishment should have known. …” Allowing the party to become “her” party, anointing her as the candidate because it was “her turn” without taking into account how she would play — regardless of whether the perceptions were accurate or even fair — was a huge tactical mistake. It turned what should have been a blowout election into a narrow loss. “Oops,” as they say.

But to use up all the goodwill that point of agreement might have generated, I don’t think not giving Trump a chance is wrong, mostly because I had a pretty good read on what he would do in office from the campaign. I said he was basically an Eastern European oligarch, working on personalized networks instead of institutional (constitutional) arrangements, and that would have a deleterious effect on American governance from day one. (Eastern Europe is my field, so of course I see it everywhere.) Events are showing that I have been pretty much right (wait, who’s the Secretary of State — Tillerson or Kushner?), and it’s good that we got started resisting the personalization of the office right away. What I have been wrong about is how well American institutions are doing at holding together. Hopefully they can hold on as the Presidency gets more and more personalized (instead of institutionalized). This is why I would celebrate a Pence presidency. I pretty much disagree with all of his policies, but at least he and I both agree that we should live in a democratic republic governed by elections and the constitution and law. ;) Hopefully, we’ll all get a clue after this president and start reining in executive power. #eternaloptimist

jader3rd, I think I get what Clark’s trying to say here, which I think is theoretically defensible but not what people have been doing in practice (at least in my experience.) People DO call Hillary’s character into question and DON’T call Donald’s. Clark, you’re not doing that, and maybe I’m obtuse, but I don’t understand how you can call character into question as an important criterion and not end up saying, “On this score, Trump’s worse.” If that’s the case, and someone voted for him, they must have voted for him either because (a) policies really are more important than policy (at least in this election), or (b) my tribe should win no matter what. But saying “Character shall be ignored for me and not for thee” is, as I said, risibly partisan.