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He'll definetly have a major role as kingmaker/queenmaker since that database of his from the 2016 election will be a valuable asset. Hope it doesn't get too Game of Thrones in the Democrat primaries, though I expect it to be crowded and fierce.

I wouldn't be surprised if the pendulum swung so hard to the other side that we get someone who is roughly a polar opposite of Trump on the political spectrum. If not 2020, then maybe 2024. Many of the potential contenders seem a bit left of Clinton (or are moving in that direction, though a whole lot of it is just jockeying for position), but the only one who is in any way a potential candidate that is as far left as Bernie Sanders is Bernie Sanders himself. However, that Avenatti lawyer says he's prepping a 2020 run, so, who knows who'll show up. Given that the Democrats are filling their bench back up again this year and in 2020, those who become elected this year and in 2020 could show up as candidates in 2024, so, who knows who will show up then. edit: Lol Katphood. Trump and Ahmendijad would definetly be an... interesting, dynamic.

There is definetly a segment of the left which takes things too far like with the 'safe spaces' (which get taken to ridiculous extremes) and the whole trigger word stuff (the right plays that game too though), I agree with that, however 'the left' is an entire spectrum as is 'the right'. 'The left' though is having something of an identity crisis atm. Also, funny lumping CNN and Fox together, but at least you aren't trying to hold Fox as 'holier than thou' over other networks.

I was trying to be humorous with my post (hence the wink smiley), but yes, it's entirely Trudeau and co.'s fault for attempting to emulate Trump. @Gfted1: Isn't that 'spam topic' territory? Anyways, just to humor you, 3.14

I don't think theres any coming back and this is the new normal. The rampup to the 2020 elections will display an unprecedented rancor.Other countries also have rancor. We’ve definetly been there with nasty mudslinging before. You know how the insults flew between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams (I believe it was those two)? While it was a bit gentlemanly compared to today (to the modern reader at least), the mudslinging was pretty fierce at times. I know other countries get nasty with each other during elections, hell, there’s always one or two here that get really nasty, I just hope it doesn’t get to ‘brawl in parliament’ rancorous. The thing is that Trump doesn’t mudsling like most politicians and the challenge is to get dirty without coming out looking dumb. Just look at Marco Rubios attempt. Though I suspect his was more spur of the moment than practiced.

Maybe because Trump is doing indefensible and terrible things? Also because the base is fired up and doesn't want to cooperate with Trump. I agree though that they're (the establishment at least) having trouble finding a message that resonates with the types of voters (no, not the 'deplorables') who went for Trump. The reason why I say that it's the establishment having issues is that the grassroots is energized like heck and are really making headway in many races so far. Winning House and Senate seats is a different ballgame from Presidential and it's not clear that the Democrats have learned their lessions from 2016. I've seen some reports of progressives saying that they should ignore the rural areas and just focus on their base, which I think is the wrong direction. Trying to play Trumps game without sinking to his level and looking terrible is going to be a challenge though. Or maybe the key is just to not play Trumps game like the way Clinton did, but I don't know how much that style helped her.

Seems like the Republicans could be split into two parties as well, both because they're undergoing the same sort of split and to balance things out with the 'second Democratic party'. Anyways, the real battle is going to be in the House, not the Senate. The 2018 Senate map is so bad for Democrats that I'd consider keeping the status quo a victory. Come 2020 and 2022 (though four years from now is an eternity in politics), watch out! Yeah, I know, most of those are safe Republican seats, the point is that it's the Republicans who will be on the defensive in those years.

Maybe Trumps method of diplomacy by twitter is infecting Canada?

It seemed like you guys were going to let the page count go past 60 or something, heh.

Or maybe create their own streaming service?

The Republicans (and Trump) also reversed a whole bunch of regulation based ones at the start of Trumps term. The regulation EO reversals were the ones that got the most attention, so, I'm not sure what EOs that didn't have to do with regulation they tried to reverse. "Anyways, 3rd party voters make a better punching bag than the much larger group who don't bother to vote at all." Probably because it's a quantifiable number that can be more easily outraged against since you can point to actual results than a nebulous amount that didn't take part in the results. Also tribalism.

And a few months ago, the largest nail manufacturer in the US was in danger of going belly up, and still are. Meanwhile, the US and China are both ramping up the trade war. Makes you wonder how long it'll take before problems start showing up in ways that Trump actually appreciates because right now he is all ruby tinted glasses (same as rose tinted, just turned up to 11) over the positive (though less than expected) job growth and the 4% growth in GDP. He's also boasted that we could see 5% growth.

On third parties being spoilers: Yeah, that's the problem with trying to scapegoat third parties as spoilers, you simply can't know what they would have voted for as a second choice (even if it was a remote 'never in a million years' second choice) without asking those people who they would have otherwise voted for. I saw an infographic recently (forget where I saw it though) showing how Hillary would have fared under different percentages of third party votes going to her and she would have had to get more than half of them to actually win the Electoral College or something. Ranked voting or something similar would likely solve some of that. Also going to note that the third parties tend to only get scapegoated as spoilers when the vote is by a narrower margin than the number of third party votes (of which the Ohio 12th district is just the most recent example) or take up such a significant chunk of the vote that it appears like candidate x would have won with those votes going to them (the 1990's example you gave, the 2000 election, and of course, 2016). That does NOT make it right? Can't you see that. "I'm sorry American people" I didn't want to dissolve the congress and cancel elections but you keep sending up people who oppose me". Philosophically there is no difference. But I agree 100% that Congress rolled over and let him get away with it. That is on them. I get your point. Huh, and the Republicans were complaining that he was doing too many? GD has a point in that it's not the numbers, it's how they were done. As for Trump, didn't he pledge that he wouldn't govern via EO the way Obama did? Especially since the Republicans complained about the numbers (even though Clinton and Reagan did ~100 more than Obama) and reversed a whole bunch at the start of Trump's term. It could also just be a difference in governing style with Trump delegating it out.

They were doing it to the extreme, that was the problem. Although the DACA thing was born more out of desperation to do something on immigration when Congress repeatedly failed to get anything done. That Congress didn't try to do anything much about the excess EOs is Congress's fault, I'm pretty sure that there were some Democrats who thought that some of that should have been done legislatively, but hey, hyperpartianship. edit: You know, in hindsight, I'm a bit surprised he didn't attempt to do something about guns via EO, not that it neccesarily would have been a good idea.

To be fair to Obama, Republicans in Congress forced his hand with severe obstruction, and yeah, I remember them threatening impeachment a few times over the EO's but never followed through. I believe there were some on the Democrat side who may have said that the EO's were being done too much or should have been done through legislation (like DACA for example) but didn't complain much about it or do anything about it because popular Democrat President. In addition to what you said about another President abusing the EO's (other than the EO reversions early on, Trump hasn't done EO's as heavily as Obama did), they definetly should also have realized that what one President does through EO, another can reverse, which Republicans heavily abused. Especially for stuff that could have been done through legislation. edit: ow, wall of an image... edit2: Cases like this close election where the margin is narrower than the number of votes a third party protest vote got really show the need for ranked voting, otherwise you can't know what their second choice was without directly asking those 1K+ people.

When I saw that earlier, I thought to myself "They really should ask themselves whether they'd want a Democrat president to have that power" because I'd imagine most would say no.

I've heard of it from the Brer Rabbit comic or uncle remus stories, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar-Baby Never read the stories themselves, but I've seen references to it. Though I didn't quite make the connection to basically 'stop digging your own hole'.

Either a slur* for African Americans or something really sticky? *well, I mean, I've heard that it can be seen as racist in some contexts.

I don't recall anything saying that it wasn't the first time the two had visited that bakery for things other than a wedding cake, so, you're going to have to back that statement up.

The muslim baker would probably go 'wtf even is a bacon cake?'. Plus there are alternatives to pork for bacon (vegetarian alternatives even), the gay couple don't have an option to not be gay.

Obviously he didn't state outright 'because they were gay', he said 'because my religious conviction tells me not to' with the 'because they are gay' being implied rather than being said. How is that different from saying 'because they were gay'?

It's not even in their jurisdiction anyway. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/7/17660302/remove-trump-star-walk-of-fame-hollywood

I was attacking the rationale he was using, not the baker specifically.

That's one of the problems I have with libertarians, particularily the ones who are the more extreme type (GD isn't that extreme though), since it takes the government to stop companies from doing stuff like dumping chemicals into the water, who is going to stop them if the government doesn't? Sure, you can go the legal route, but that has problems of it's own. Speaking of that, I wonder how conservatives would like a scenario where private businesses refuse services to homophobes and to take the religion track, what if the hypothetical business proprietor is a devout follower of a religion that says they must embrace homosexuals with love and reject homophobes and not allowing the proprietor to do that is a violation of their religion (which is the same argument that said bakery refusing gay people etc is making.

Mean girl gifs? Trolling other countries is one thing, having someone on a government linked twitter account do a dumb faux pas like that is another.