George W. Bush vs. Donald Trump

[Sopranos Republican]

I think the only argument for Bush here is “lol nice guy “ Trump’s rhetoric was certainly more toxic, and he was obviously still horrible, but on almost any metric he was certainly better than Dubya. For example, if I were to tell you there were two candidates on the ballot:

Candidate 1 is:

Pro-life
Extremely Anti-Gay
Extremely Anti-Marijuana legalization
Arguably a top 5 military hawk among all U.S. Presidents
Against the vast majority of government spending that wasn’t directly tied to murdering Middle-Easterners
A Bible-Thumper who uses the Good Book to justify murdering the brown people in Iraq, along with his attempts at constitutionally banning gay-rights.

Candidate 2 is:

Pro-life (but everyone knows he doesn’t actually give two sh*ts about this issue)
Has made almost no attempt to overturn national gay marriage, besides occasional whispers that never went anywhere.
Fired his Attorney General who wanted to prosecute states that had legalized marijuana. And sure, while there were other reasons that he fired Sessions, from everything we can tell he wanted him to leave states that had legalized alone. 
Got us less involved overall in the Middle East
Is fine spending federal dollars to stimulate the economy.
Is so obviously not a Bible Thumper that he can’t even hold the book right side up.

The only area where Bush was demonstrably better than Trump was the immigration issue, and while I agree, his stances on immigration were abysmal, I don’t think that his stance on this was any worse than the Tea Party Era Republican Party of 2009-12. Trump saw where the party was headed, and jumped on it. This obviously doesn’t excuse his behavior, or horrific views on most issues, but let’s be realistic, Bush would’ve never gotten the opportunity to be president if he had run in 2016 with his “compassionate” views on immigration. He would’ve lost the primary to Trump or whoever the “populist,” anti-immigrant candidate was.

If I’m a Democrat however, I would much rather run against a Bush type in 2024, than a Trump type. I’d welcome the neo-cons reclaiming the GOP as it would likely lead to 3 or 4 straight Democratic victories. The key to victory right now is blue-collar Americans. If the GOP goes back to the neo-cons, it can almost be guaranteed that many of the gains they made among working class whites will be erased in the years to come.

[Sopranos Republican]

Voted 'neither'. (Thanks for the option!)

Don't forget that, in addition to 100,000+ deaths of Iraqi and US citizens, Bush expanded the surveillance state so that you can't even borrow a library book without that ending up in some government records.

I'm still a believer that Trump is incompetent and Bush (or rather Cheney, who was running the whole show) is genuinely evil. Neither of them care about the Constitution. And the rehabilitation of Bush among Democrats (RL Dems, not people here) is an indicator of short memories at best.

The thing is, most RL Dems that I know (especially older working class types) still mostly think that Bush sucks as much as they did back in 2008. I’m convinced it’s upper middle class and rich people who are most likely to experience a Bush revisionism. Especially Hollywood, I’m convinced that those idiots hurt Democrats more than they help us in most elections.

I think the only argument for Bush here is “lol nice guy “ Trump’s rhetoric was certainly more toxic, and he was obviously still horrible, but on almost any metric he was certainly better than Dubya. For example, if I were to tell you there were two candidates on the ballot:

Candidate 1 is:

Pro-life
Extremely Anti-Gay
Extremely Anti-Marijuana legalization
Arguably a top 5 military hawk among all U.S. Presidents
Against the vast majority of government spending that wasn’t directly tied to murdering Middle-Easterners
A Bible-Thumper who uses the Good Book to justify murdering the brown people in Iraq, along with his attempts at constitutionally banning gay-rights.

Candidate 2 is:

Pro-life (but everyone knows he doesn’t actually give two sh*ts about this issue)
Has made almost no attempt to overturn national gay marriage, besides occasional whispers that never went anywhere.
Fired his Attorney General who wanted to prosecute states that had legalized marijuana. And sure, while there were other reasons that he fired Sessions, from everything we can tell he wanted him to leave states that had legalized alone. 
Got us less involved overall in the Middle East
Is fine spending federal dollars to stimulate the economy.
Is so obviously not a Bible Thumper that he can’t even hold the book right side up.

The only area where Bush was demonstrably better than Trump was the immigration issue, and while I agree, his stances on immigration were abysmal, I don’t think that his stance on this was any worse than the Tea Party Era Republican Party of 2009-12. Trump saw where the party was headed, and jumped on it. This obviously doesn’t excuse his behavior, or horrific views on most issues, but let’s be realistic, Bush would’ve never gotten the opportunity to be president if he had run in 2016 with his “compassionate” views on immigration. He would’ve lost the primary to Trump or whoever the “populist,” anti-immigrant candidate was.

If I’m a Democrat however, I would much rather run against a Bush type in 2024, than a Trump type. I’d welcome the neo-cons reclaiming the GOP as it would likely lead to 3 or 4 straight Democratic victories. The key to victory right now is blue-collar Americans. If the GOP goes back to the neo-cons, it can almost be guaranteed that many of the gains they made among working class whites will be erased in the years to come.

Bush created a fertile ground for Trump to rise in. Trump's rhetoric created division, polarization and violence, but on policies he was much better. Both were atrocious though and easily among the worst presidents we've ever had.

Let's not forget the roles Nixon, Reagan, and Gingrich had in Trump's rise.

certainly!

Yes, I’d argue that Trump was like if Teddy Roosevelt and Nixon had a really f***ed up baby, with a dash of Reagan clichés thrown in. But we also can’t completely let Democrats off the hook 100% in the rise of Trump. If the Democrats had actually been able to accomplish some of the same economic policy goals that they’ve been talking about since the 60’s, the environment most likely wouldn’t have been fertile for someone like Trump to rise. For example if we’d gotten universal health care, and a better welfare state, the GOP would be so obsessed with slashing those programs that we’d never have lost in places like Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin etc.