May birthday, so yes, he would. You can't be inaugurated under 35, but he'll be more than halfway to 36. That said, while legally old enough, I'm not sure if people would vote for someone that young. Youngest to date was the first Roosevelt (42). Youngest elected was Kennedy (43). Youngest veep was Breckenridge (36), I think.
Ah, good point, my mistake. And yeah, definitely agreed regarding voter hesitancy to elect someone his age.
It does seem like Trump has probably broken the mold permanently, in terms of the type of background one needs to become president.
I think it was a wake-up call for guys like Zuck, Mark Cuban, etc who desire influence but had never seriously considered running for president as a viable option.
I've never payed attention to them. They seem to be used more for the political purpose of manipulation, than for producing an innocent, yet unnecessary, prediction of results
> And you can absolutely win an election with both minority vote share and a lack of popularity.
No, you still need a certain amount of voter popularity, with the right distribution; unless you are talking about something else.
Isn't it increasing argued that the dictionary definition of racism is only one possible definition? I've heard it stated many times that the newer excepted definition involves the traditional aspect of racism coupled with the component of power. That is to say that racism is prejudice plus power.
As an example, a minority in the US may be prejudiced or bigoted, but they cannot be racist since they lack the societal power that whites enjoy. Thus only whites can be racist.
Just to be clear, I'm not endorsing one definition over the other, I only meant to illustrate that even seemingly well defined words can have different meanings.
You're correct. I should have been more clear. My main point was that racial prejudice alone (#3 in the above link), minus the power component, wouldn't be enough to satisfy the requirements of racism under some definitions.
Good point, although I think it could be argued that there could be a political doctrine based on racism at say the local or regional level, that wouldn't be widespread enough at the societal level to qualify as racism under some definitions. For example you could live in a city or town that adopts discriminatory laws against whites, this would meet the political doctrine aspect, but it still wouldn't be widespread enough in American society to qualify as racism.
I'm not very smart though so you should keep that in mind, I could be totally off base here.
I know this is going to come off like a "smart ass" But, I really curious what people think. Can someone be a bigot towards racists? I've heard the argument that the left is intolerant of intolerance and there for hypocritical, which sort of on it's face sounds plausible but seems more like an alt-fact to me. But I can't put my finger of why.
It kind of reminds me of the time I was arguing with my brother and his response was "I don't believe in logic"
How do you deal with people that refuse to argue with logic and facts?
> How do you deal with people that refuse to argue with logic and facts?
This is a good point, and circles back to the original thought in this thread. When words are unclear, how can you discuss logic and facts? People don't have the patience (nor should they) to sit down and cooperatively define dozens of key terms each time they have a meaningful discussion about the direction of society, culture, and government.
Relabeling and redefining things to assert power (instead of reasoning with others) inhibits cooperative reason and is therefore, in my mind, irrational and harmful.
Why shouldn't people have the patience to define their language before having a discussion? Your last line seems to indicate that you think having unchanged definitions to words is a good thing.
My wife and I define things to each other frequently. We often are saying the same things but confusing each others meanings because of wording.
> Why shouldn't people have the patience to define their language before having a discussion?
Most people aren't practiced in keeping sets of definitions in mind that vary from context to context.
You're also opening the (aspirationally meaningful) conversation with somewhat involved semantic discussion and debate.
"Now that we've labored over the meanings of 'race', 'diversity', and 'equality' for fifteen minutes and invented three new terms to encompass the meanings of 'racism' that are relevant here, tell me how the latest executive order might end up exposing your family to more of racism-type-B."
The implications are overwhelming. To be a meaningful part of the debate would require a great deal, maybe even obsessive, of focus, time and research.
I used to love text because it felt unambiguous. I just realized a part of me fears speaking because I don't want to be misunderstood.
I would say these days anything along the lines of what you are asking is difficult to answer. The language concerning such topics have been so muddled with people's opinions of what words actually mean that no one fully understands what the other side is trying to say. Which only ends in personal attacks.
It is one thing to try to deal with people who refuse to argue with facts; it's quite another to deal with people who refuse to accept that their can be different interpretations of the same facts by different people.
Labels are extemely useful and important. You do not cede ground on framing. Even if all you can do is fight to a standstill, it is better than not fighting.
Calling Trump racist or a Nazi isn't effective. It's preaching to the choir. You don't convince his supporters, and you alienate the moderates that believe Trump is moderate like them.
This is deliberate. Trump deliberately made himself the motte-and-bailey candidate, so both moderates and extremists feel Trump is on their side. He's done that through double-messages and lying, so that the moderates came to believe that Trump was lying on his extreme proposals, and the extremists believed Trump was lying on his moderate proposals. Even his VP choice served that goal.
By calling Trump names, you're setting yourself up to be seen as unfairly strawmanning him, therefore reducing your credibility among the people you most want to convince. You're also setting yourself up to be seen as slyly using words as emotional hand-grenades ("nazi! bigot!") to shut down discourse, rather than actually believing these labels. Through that, you cede the moral high ground, not because you're manipulative, but because your target audience believes you are.
Hillary Clinton paid consultants millions to help her convince the public, and even that didn't work. Throwing around labels it hopeless. Regardless of whether you honestly believe those labels, they don't work anymore. Go on at your peril. I don't know what the solution is. Wider involvement in the political process, repeal of the Electoral College, and redistricting all seem like better ideas. And then, propose a positive vision, not just criticism of the other side.
Edit:
I'll be clearer: you're right. Do you want to be right, or do you want to win?
The status quo, such as it was, in 2016, was worse than... what?
I'm just not seeing how my life, or my neighbors lives, are improved by anything that's come so far. Or that is on the promised list of things to come.
It is actually already worse for some of us than it was 11 days ago.
"All or nothing", it turns out, is really appealing to people. It may be toxic to a functioning democracy with a diverse population, but doesn't seem to lessen the appeal.
We are very good at pretending that when we get "nothing", it is a temporary inconvenience.
