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Uhhhh... Ken-san, I would like to argue with that, but I think it's just a matter of defining what a politician is.

I wouldn't disagree with an assessment of him as a grately successful con man, a superior manipulator of a certain class of gullible people, a person who is unabashedly dishonest and unethical, etc.

Are those all characteristic of brilliance in a politician?

There's an old joke that been around forever, How do you tell if a politician is lying? His lips are moving.

Politicians rank below used car salesmen in the trustworthy, honest category. At the bottom of the list.

This first one is old

Congress Ranks Last in Confidence in Institutions

https://news.gallup.com/poll/141512/congress-ranks-last-confidence-institutions.aspx

This second one is new, 2021 as it shows only 12% of all Americans have a great deal or Quite a lot of confidence in congress.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx

I'll also throw this in for the heck of it.

Why Americans Don’t Fully Trust Many Who Hold Positions of Power and Responsibility

https://www.pewresearch.org/politic...d-positions-of-power-and-responsibility/

As for Trump, his about as political blind as one can get. He was one lucky SOB to be matched up against Hillary Clinton in 2016. I'm positive almost any other Democrat would have trounced him. But as a friend of mine described the 2016 election, it was an election between the devil we didn't know, Trump, a businessman, TV show host, no one had any idea how he would govern vs. the devil we knew, Hillary Clinton. Everyone knew exactly how she would govern. Perhaps Hillary was too well known.

We chose the devil we didn't know over the devil we did. I think he summed up 2016 acturately. 2016 just matched up the two most unliked, unwanted candidates in our history. Here.take a look at the presidential candidates favorable/unfavorable ratings.

Highest to lowest favorable/unfavorable ratings of each major party presidential candidate.
Favorable/unfavorable
1956 Eisenhower 84/12%
1964 LBJ 81/13%
1976 Carter 81/16%
1960 JFK 80/14%
1960 Nixon 79/16%
1968 Nixon 79/22%
1976 Ford 79/20%
1972 Nixon 76/21%
1968 Humphrey 72/28%
1984 Reagan 70/30%
1980 Carter 68/32%
1984 Mondale 66/34%
1980 Reagan 64/31%
1992 Bill Clinton 64/33%
2008 Obama 62/35%
2012 Obama 62/37%
1956 Stevenson 61/31%
2004 G.W. Bush 61/39%
2008 McCain 60/35%
1992 G.H.W. Bush 59/40%
2000 G.W. Bush 58/38%
2004 Kerry 57/40%
1996 Bill Clinton 56/42%
1988 G.H.W. Bush 56/39%
2000 Gore 55/43%
2012 Romney 55/43%
1972 McGovern 55/41%
1996 Dole 54/45%
1988 Dukakis 53/42%
2020 Biden 52/46%
1964 Goldwater 43/47%
2020 Trump 43/56%
2016 Hillary Clinton 38/56%
2016 Donald Trump 36/60%

So Trump's numbers actually improved during his first term.

His standing with the Republican Party has risen even more. He is the defacto party leader even though he is currently out of power. The more Dems fight among themselves the lower they will sink in the polls.

Trump is currently the presumptive candidate for 2024. Harris the presumptive Democrat.

Trump isn't a politician. He's an opportunist. Politicians have careers in politics. It's rather like calling Jeff Bezos an astronaut.

The rule by fiat that the presidency has been doing since Obama is interesting. Obama did it because the Republicans owned the congress, second time around, so that is the only way he could get anything done. I also found it interesting that only once did the Republicans get after him for running with fiats. I think that was because the Republicans didn't want to be painted as a group that was anti legislation and had been responsible for not passing any legislation. Whoever has the presidency is the one that is responsible for what happens whatever that might be. I think one of the main problems that Biden has is that he doesn't accept that simple fact and so he just denies and that is never a really good idea.

Now we have Biden. The Republicans have him pretty much shut down except for the one exception which they used at the beginning of Biden and not since. Now they think they are going to do it again except that they have problems within their party which will, if they keep it up, assure that they lose EVERYTHING in the next general election. The Dems don't buy that because they only talk to one another and they all agree they are doing a great and wonderful job. That being the case Biden isn't even doing a lot of fiat legislation. The Congress, which, in theory, the Democrats own is basically doing nothing as far as legislation is concerned although they are doing a lot of talking, and arguing, and whining but little else because the Republicans have, again, pretty much shut them down.

So, we now are experiencing inflation. I think that will go down when they clear up the goods lines so that we don't have, literally, hundreds of ship waiting to discharge what America has bought but doesn't seem to know how to get it off the ships and into their stores. When that happens I expect that prices will go down as dramatically as they have gone up.

An Egotistical opportunist at that greger. Certainly no politician. But correct, the defacto leader of the GOP. The GOP elected leaders are scared to death of Trump. Although I'm sure they know that Trump caused the loss of the 2 Georgia senate seats and might cause them not taking control of the house next year.

As for supply and demand. With a year to go, that may indeed work itself out. But my question is, is supply and demand the reason for inflation or is it all those trillions printed up in COVID relief with nothing to back up all those the dollars the cause. I plain don't know, I'm no financial guru. Just someone who follows the numbers and trends.

another example of how I am right.

The American electorate is stupid.

I am not positive any other candidate would have won .... "easily" .... as you suggest. The numbers tell the story. 2016 Trump had 62M votes, in 2020 he had 74M votes. It tells me a sizeable chunk of Americans didn;t actually care whether he was an unknown quantity. It didn't matter in 2016, and it sure didn't matter in 2020, and it doesn't matter now or will matter in 2024. The voice of nasty ad hominems appeals to the cretins who make up the Republican Base. These folks are so dumb they don't realize their own hypocrisy nor their own cognitive dissonance.

Professional pollsters, and political pundits can do all the rationalizations they want, and clothe it in numbers which prove their case, but the reality is Trump is head of a religious/political cult. Psychologists can tell people why some folks would be easily manipulated into believing lies, but it has nothing to do with qualifications for governance. Clinton was far more qualified to run the federal government than almost everyone who ran.

Of course Clinton was titular head of the Satanic Democrat Party of Pedophiles, so maybe that had something to do with it. Look .... Trump is still president and continues to ride AF 1 ..... just ask Trump supporters. It's like pundits who contrive all manners of rationalizations for why people are not getting vaccinated, when the answer is rather simple ... the vast majority are either Republicans who have lost all sense or blacks who are justifiably (at least initially) wary of "another" threat to black folks.

The point is don't look for extraordinary reasons a square peg doesn't fit in a round hole, when the reason is intuitively obvious.

Baloney! We knew exactly how he would govern. We knew how Clinton would govern too. The sad part is that American voters chose Trump. Yes, they are stupid. No, there's nothing to be done about it.

Word on the street is that Biden plans to run again. Polls show that Trump would beat him.

But both these guys are nearing their expiration date. Have you noticed the Great Resignation going on? Workers are demanding to be treated better by employers. Is it too big a stretch to think that maybe they will also demand more from the government?

Maybe both these old farts will get their asses primaried.

Or maybe Biden will pull a rabbit out of his ass and get his numbers up, he vowed to be the most pro-union president in history...labor unions are also demanding more from corporations.

There might be a new ballgame brewing and we're so focused on Trump we aren't seeing it.

Meantime Manchin wants any mention of climate taken out of all legislation. The Coal Barons of West Virginia are demanding it! So the rest of us have to go along...it's maybe a bridge too far.

I started an entire thread about that, but you'd never know it, because it doesn't show-up on the leftside of the page where Current Topics are...

You may have seen and knew how Trump would govern. But I don't think independents, swing voters did. Remember these are the great unwashed, coach potatoes. The ones who don't pay any attention to politics until an election nears. They're certainly not political junkies. It's more important to them if their favorite sports team wins or loses than who become president or controls congress. Still, a majority of independents didn't want neither Trump nor Clinton to become their next president. 54% of independents if Gallup is correct.

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/pol...ans-dislike-presidential-candidates.aspx

Fact is 25% of all Americans disliked both and didn't want neither on to become president. It boiled down to who you wanted to lose the least, not win, but lose the least. But that is water under the bridge.

I don't know what the future holds. I'm no seer or oracle. The one thing that won't change is that we'll still have the best government money can buy.

Money Floods the Race for Control of Congress, More Than a Year Early

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/16/us/politics/midterm-elections-campaign-financing.html

What do you make of this Pero?

Republicans very much in favor of Trump as the Republican nominee