(02-18-2019 09:21 PM)illiniowl Wrote:  

(02-18-2019 04:34 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(02-18-2019 11:29 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  The Inner Circle meets
"As presidential hopefuls like Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and Sherrod Brown auditioned before them,..."
"But Mr. Obama’s party has also plainly moved leftward on core matters of policy since his term ended, and some factions have grown contemptuous of the consensus-seeking approach Mr. Obama took as president. The coming primary campaign may hinge in part on whether Democratic voters favor making gradual improvements to Mr. Obama’s legacy or pursuing more disruptive policy changes like enacting single-payer health care."

I'm sorry, but any author who describes Obama as "consensus-seeking" loses all credibility with me right there.

Generally agree, but putting aside the Democrat-friendly tone of the article, this illustrates why I've always thought Trump's election would end up being a Pyrrhic victory for Republicans. He is so personally unpalatable to a clear majority of the electorate that the Democrats now believe they can run farther to the left than they've ever dared before and still win. They see an opportunity to give the Overton Window a big-time pull to the left and it could be a generation or longer before it even returns to where it is now, if that. And if that happens, will the main benefit of a Trump presidency, getting Gorsuch instead of Garland in for Scalia and keeping a 5-4 conservative SCOTUS majority for a few years (Clarence Thomas turns 71 in June), be enough to compensate for it? Not in my mind.
The Ds still could overreach and somehow snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, especially if the economy is doing well, but right now I'm just not seeing an electoral college path for Trump back to the WH if he runs. I certainly hope he doesn't.

That's exactly why I was not a big Trump supporter in the first place. I figured the chances were pretty good that if Hillary won, she would screw things up badly enough to produce exactly the opposite result you describe. And if republicans could hold the senate, then I really didn't worry too much about the SCt.

I said back then that my optimum outcome was a narrow Hillary victory with republicans holding on to both houses of congress. So far Trump as been better than I expected, and clearly better than I would have expected from Hillary, but he's getting more and more into areas where I don't agree with him.