"I am saying that Obamacare is the best thing that has happen benifiting the American working class in a very long time. Trump (being a super rich guy) has surprisingly somehow been able to convince his working class supporters that Obamacare is not for them. How was this possible?"

That's a lie, peterlund. Chocolate rations have increased from 30 grams to 20 grams. Ever since the introduction of Obamacare, medical insurance for my middle-class family has only increased. And no, we disliked Obamacare far before Trump announced his candidacy. Stop assuming you know what's best for the vast majority of Americans.

"Stop assuming you know what's best for the vast majority of Americans."

This is the problem.

leon1122 thinks his views do represent the vast majority of Americans.

Jeff Kuta hath spoken

@Tolstoy @leon1122
The problem here is not the supporters themselves, whose anger at the system is valid, given their 40+ years of political isolation. It's the policies that they choose to represent their anger, and the person who embodies those policies.

Trump lies about almost everything, from making up unemployment rates of 50% to claiming that Ted Cruz's father was involved in JFK's assassination. His speeches consistently rank as the most content-free, factually incorrect pieces of prose in American politics.

The worst part of all of this is that Trump pander's to his supporters gut feelings on core issues, be it immigration (the notion that America should be a white country), terrorism and national security (the notion that America should be a Christian country) and trade (the notion that America should be isolated from the world economy because it's exceptional enough to do that). These gut feelings themselves are dangerous enough that we should think twice before letting this guy get the nuclear codes.

I didn't vote for Trump in the CA Primary - I wrote in 'none of the above'. I will probably vote Libertarian in the national election in November. The Democrats haven't wanted to hear my opinions in decades - I've been dismissed, laughed, and figuratively spit on by the Left for three decades.

The Republicans haven't been paying attention, either. At best I've gotten lip service from them.

Tolstoy is right in his initial response: Trump isn't the disease. He's merely a symptom.

If the Left doesn't at least start pretending the Right has a valid perspective and ease back on the blatant ridicule and open hatred, the fecal matter is going to firmly strike the oscillating aeration device, and it isn't going to be pretty.

That isn't a threat, that isn't the ranting of an 'old man' telling those wacky kids to get off his lawn. That is something I am really afraid of.

My $.02.

PS - It's okay to not have any liking for 90% of what the President's policies or actions have been for the last 8 years. It doesn't have anything to do with his skin color. It doesn't mean I'm a racist. That automatic insinuation by the Left anytime anyone speaks out against Obama is actually the kind of condescending dismissal of the Loyal Opposition Tolstoy was talking about.

PS - Trump's a complete tool, and Clinton is yet another corrupt politician, perhaps more corrupt than most. Or can I not say that? Is it sexist? (the correct answers, by the way, are 'yes' and 'no', respectively).

"Trump pander's to his supporters gut feelings on core issues"

That's exactly what a President SHOULD do. A president is supposed to represent his people, not try to change them to suit his or her ideology.

@leon the problem is that the gut reactions tend to be more based in fiction and wishful thinking than fact. Pandering to those instincts makes good sound bite but terrible policy.

gut reaction=common sense, though liberals would have us ignore that.

So thinking things through and checking facts is not common sense?

They absolutely are, and I've reached the same conclusion both ways.

*conclusions

My hope is that whoever gets elected will kill their party and a major rebalance will happen.

'My hope is that whoever gets elected will kill their party and a major rebalance will happen.'

As long as we're hoping, let's hope both get killed!

Someone did try to kill Trump recently, but I feel like hoping for that is a little too far.

Maybe if the right were to decide to be reality based, the left would stop dismissing them. When you have a movement dedicated to pretending that climate change isn't real, evolution doesn't happen and the solution to gun violence is more guns, it's pretty damned hard to pretend that the right has a legitimate point of view. You're entitled to your own opinions, but you aren't entitled to your own facts. When a political ideology is that unhinged, there is no way to treat it as something legitimate.

I believe in climate change and evolution, and I feel that many other on the right do as well. However, I still agree with the right on far more issues than the left.

"Maybe if the right were to decide to be reality based, the left would stop dismissing them."

Declaring Trump and his tens of millions of supporters "illegitimate" based on your ridiculously contrived three presumed standards of reality is your prerogative, I suppose, but yours are the kind of dismissive delusions that have made Trump a political force.

Leaving aside the fact that I'd wager most Trumpists believe in evolution (the religious right I suspect has not been as enthusiastic about him as most other "right" leaning demographics), to be blunt, your post sounds about as absurd as Marie Antoinette wishing away The Revolution as she's being strapped to the guillotine. "But you aren't based in reality!" she cries, "The world is ruled by Kings, you fools!"

Trump's supporters are here. Their movement is a revolution against your assumed (and completely subjective) standards of reality. You can mock and dismiss them if you like, content in your childishly smug sense of intellectual and moral superiority, but this will not make them go away - quite the contrary, it will only buttress their convictions all the more. You can resort to violence, as some of your ilk have been doing at Trump's rallies, but before going that route I urge you to consider which side has more guns. Or you can deal with them as fellow members of the Great Political Experiment, engage them in the political process, and hope that their anger blows over before they do too much damage.

The choice is yours.

"I am saying that Obamacare is the best thing that has happen benifiting the American working class in a very long time."

If you think that, you are obviously not a member of the American working class, or at least are too young to have had to worry about paying for it yourself. I'm paying more than twice what I was eight years ago for health insurance that covers fare less; my out of pocket costs for care have risen about eight-fold. I've actually gotten off fairly lightly, from what I hear. America has the most expensive health care "system" in the world. While the ridiculous expense was tolerable once, under Obamacare, combined with the "jobless recovery" and declining wages, the American medical industry has become a blatant plunderbund, with government bureaucrats and hospital administrators helping themselves to great fortunes while people go bankrupt from basic medical procedures. With this kind of delusional perspective, it is no wonder Trumpism is completely baffling to you.

"your post sounds about as absurd as Marie Antoinette wishing away The Revolution as she's being strapped to the guillotine. "But you aren't based in reality!" she cries, "The world is ruled by Kings, you fools!""
DEATH TO THE HABSBURG QU--
Wait, this isn't the place for that...
But the French Revolution is almost a perfect example of this, considering not only Antoinette but also monarchs around Europe and especially the English were critical of the Revolution and dismissive of its intents, while also afraid its ideas, which were absurd in their eyes, would spread to their countries.

All Obamacare did was guarantee big pharma that they could charge whatever they want for medications. Plus, the USG has clamped down on buying cheaper medicines in overseas markets under penalty of criminal prosecution. Next year the fines kick in if young people who do not need health insurance fail to buy a policy for approximately $5,000 to $10,000 per year. Yeah, Obamacare is a great law for the working class . . . NOT.

You lost me at "young people who do not need health insurance." You and every young person out there needs health insurance. The whole point of penalizing people without health insurance is getting them to get health insurance so that big pharma gets what they want (because Obama doesn't have the power to stop them) but they get it from insurers and not from your, oh, I don't know, important things like your mortgage budget.

People should have the choice to decide for themselves whether or not to buy health insurance. I don't see any reason the government should be able to force anyone to buy anything.

Listen to people who were previously refused health insurance, who no longer have to save all their money for an emergency and can now get something and spend their money on new products and services (ie making jobs)

Here they speak for themselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7LF5Vj2n64

(NB: Hank and John Green have been talking about these issues for a while, they are brothers who run a edutainment youtube channel vlogbrothers
Some background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPf8vwnoEtU
and is obama care better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMuXcuudvCc )

@Leon, should private insurance companies also have the choice to not insure people?

Or is the affordable care act a middle ground between what the customers want and what the insurance industry wants?

You do have the choice to not buy health insurance, you can move to Canada or Mexico.

Leon said I was wrong, so I'm more confident that I'm right.

Allowing people who don't understand the lifelong consequences of their stupidity to continue being stupid does not make much sense to me. Basic operations can break $100,000 without insurance. Sure, that can get reduced, but no one has that sitting around.

Forcing people to buy insurance allows insurance companies to demand insane prices that consumers wouldn't otherwise have paid for. Yes, in a free market, the insurance companies should be able to refuse insuring anyone they want. No, I will not move to Mexico or Canada but rather hope that Trump becomes President and repeals the "Affordable Care" Act.

Trump bought it ( the Republican nomination ) so it's his to destroy in any way he sees fit...same goes for the nation

If the people of the United States are stupid enough to elect Trump President then they'll deserve the fate he leads them to...pity about the rest of us