How can Trump do those things that all the Democrat presidents could not?

 As we get closer to the election more and more of the low information voters are coming out. These Elon fan boys are now Trump voters. They seem to have no idea how government works. And do not care.

Others are coming out and saying "it's not going to be so bad." After all, how can Trump do those things that all the Democrat presidents could not?

It's simple. None of the departments and none of the so called administrative state are required by the Constitution. It might be a little difficult to dismantle the Treasury. But for the most part the departments are strictly there so the president does not have to run every government function. If the DOE is not needed, then scrap it. If the EPA is bad...not even a cabinet level department...scrap it. All these things require is a presidential order. There is no budget required to eliminate a department. A building left to be auctioned off.

There are in fact laws that set up departments like the DEA. They do get funding, normally. But it is entirely up to the Trump appointed head of the EPA (could be an oil executive under Trump) whether to enforce the laws. One of the objections to environmental matters is that to enforce the rules and to sue polluters, you still have to go to court. Both sides paying the lawyers. A link to EPA laws:

https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/laws-and-executive-orders

If an authority over some matter comes up, the Supreme Court will rule that the federal government has no authority over this matter. It could could be the US Fish and Wildlife Service or some similar agency.

No Democrat ever proposed to scrap the federal governmnet and run a bare bones operation. Make money and run a military would be all that is required. Trump can round up the immigrants with his army if that is his plan. Use army funds to house the camps. Pull out military bases from the entire world.

The lines are getting blurry. The President can also cut funding. He cannot fund new things, but there is a way to cut spending:

“We can simply choke off the money,” Trump said in a 2023 campaign video. “For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending.”

His plan, known as “impoundment,” threatens to provoke a major clash over the limits of the president’s control over the budget. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate the federal budget, while the role of the executive branch is to dole out the money effectively. But Trump and his advisers are asserting that a president can unilaterally ignore Congress’ spending decisions and “impound” funds if he opposes them or deems them wasteful.

(From Propublica, by Molly Redden )

Voting guide

For your undecided friends and relatives. The man is not well. He is not fit to be president of any country. If he quits, you get Vance. Who is not quite human.

 

It may take some effort for them to see who Trump is. Mostly a fake.

If they are still "I just don't know about Kamala..." remind them of their duty to the country:

Finally, a word on polls from Jeff:

It seems that FOREIGNERS are indeed Trump's trump card

 He does not seem to be winning in other areas, so it makes sense to repeat the claim, from Ohio to Colorado to California.

I took a few wild guessed in the 538 polling game.

I took the view that the ones that agree to answer at all are angry about 1 migrants or 2 abortion.

You can do your own guessing here:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/donald-trump-poll-quiz-2024/

Information overload

Why is it people are confused about issues and are often labeled low information voters? It is, I claim, because there is just too much stuff out there coming to you via the Internet.  Most of it is not factual. Compare this to the everyman on the train or even the union worker in 1900. Or compare news today to to the TV news of the 70s with Walter Cronkite. The worker read his newspaper daily cover to cover. Especially election years. He read the comics too, it took 5 minutes. 

The TV watcher got the general idea of Vietnam from Cronkite. The war was going badly.Now compare to today's Internet news consumer. There is too much. They lose interest. They are more likely to click around with sports, entertainement and everything that is not news.

Chris Hayes has a book coming out February that touches on this overload of infromation and entertainment coming to us. The people that just are not interested in elections are not going to get much further information on the two candidates. They will actually dismiss most of the news on Trump or Harris. The only decision that they will take some time with is whether to vote or not.

White Males and others...the Trump Coalition

 It was a populist movement, a cult. It lasted a good 9-10 years. Trump has almos run out of steam, though there is some bluster still left to Trump at a rally. I think Trum is going to lose. But that does not solve our problem. These voters are still there in 2028. It will be hard to pass any major reform, such as rules for the Supreme Court and any plans to take the lifetime appointment away. As well as border plans. Some plan will emerge, but the Trump folks want zero immigrant admitted. 

He captured white males. Polls list men without a college degree. This Brookings chart lists just the so called working class. Overall, the Trump support is white males, but in the working class also a good portion of women. In the middle class voters it is not that way.

There is at times a lack of interst in an election from this group regarding the issues and a candidate. You can see it for McCain, but not especially for Romney. He was as far as possible from the working class!

A website has listed the types of Trump voters we had in the 2016 election:

https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/the-five-types-trump-voters

I've abbreviated the groups:

1. Staunch Conservatives (not recent, the always Republicans)

2. Free Marketers (tech boys, Musk)

3. American Preservationists. The people who think there is some idea of "America" that is under attack

4. Anti-Elites (I would include some libertrians, they just hate all of the federal gov't)

5. The Disengaged. People who literally don't care about politics. (there for the show, many of them racists this time around. They showed up at Trump rallies).

In the same way that you can trust that nearly 100% of Harley Davidson owners are Trumpers, you can get the feel for certain groups gravitating toward Trump.

The big strawman that Trump created for these people to focus on is illegal aliens. They are monsters, according to Trump. Groups 1-5 are not going to argue against that.