Originally Posted by magnumpi (Post 12195182)

The USA gets crazier every minute

https://www.google.ca/amp/www.indepe...441.html%3Famp

Originally Posted by not2old (Post 12195219)

and why not - all it takes is money & popularity, political experience is no longer a prerequisite

Originally Posted by dbd33 (Post 12195268)

It seems to me that there is merit in a politician having experience of an industry, even if it is the entertainment industry.

Lack of experience of the world can hurt.

David Cameron, for example, had no experience of anything and so he was out of touch with the mood of the country and made a catastrophic blunder.

There's no risk of Oprah failing to know her audience.

Originally Posted by dbd33 (Post 12195268)

Was it ever? Ronald Reagan wasn't elected on the strength of his negotiation of foreign trade treaties.

Originally Posted by Ebonhawke (Post 12195332)

You get a health plan! You get a health plan! Everyone gets a health plan!

Originally Posted by not2old (Post 12195363)

The first person running an election promise to say that & implement it would get most of the votes to become President.

Originally Posted by not2old (Post 12195363)

The first person running an election promise to say that & implement it would get most of the votes to become President.

In fact that would need to be their only platform promise

As to how its paid for or what gets taken away is another issue.

Originally Posted by dbd33 (Post 12195412)

I don't think that holds, someone has just become President (admittedly not with most of the votes) on a platform of taking healthcare away.

Originally Posted by Ebonhawke (Post 12196110)

Would disagree that a candidate who was running primarily on a platform of 'single-payer' type health care would get most of the votes to become President. The American populace has been fed enough anti-big-government propaganda to resist the idea of the federal government controlling their healthcare, especially if payment for the system was through payroll taxes etc (less transparency about where money is going etc). I think the ACA has given Americans a sense of how their health care system differs from the rest of the Western world, but I don't think they're ready to embrace a 'single-payer' system as yet.



I also disagree that Trump won on a platform of taking healthcare away from people. He won on a platform of change - only one of those changes was to address the issues with the ACA, but people may not be cognizant of what those changes entailed. There's been a few stories published since the election about people who loathed Obamacare, but liked the ACA, not realizing they were one and the same. Some have hypothesized that some of the animosity was because of the 'Obamacare' name, and the association with Democrats (and for some, along racial lines), rather than how ACA impacted their lives (although there are some issues with current costs etc of the ACA, which are bigger issues to resolve).

It doesn't help that Trump is providing pie-in-the-sky promises of what the new health care reform will be - which doesn't align with what the Republican Party wants to do