Very clear. I agree.

Perfection is the mortal enemy of good enough.

I have no idea who originally said it but is bitingly true.

The only way to ever have a candidate that YOU will agree with perfectly (100% of the time) would be for you to run for the office. So if we are choosing someone else to delegate our sovereign authority to we have to choose.

The closest we can come to a rational choice is to determine what issue or issues are most important to us. Further we rate and weigh these issues against the candidates we have to select from. From there we reach a decision that in our judgment is "best". Naturally complicated by the fact that the candidate is going to compromise themselves on some or all of those issues.

Using that process for want of a better word, I looked at all the announced candidates in 2015. I chose now President Trump then as my best choice. Not as my perfect candidate, but as the single candidate most likely to produce results in MY self interest after the election.

He hasn't been perfect by any stretch, but his results have been good from my perspective and far far better than I would have expected from any other candidate.

Overall, my choice has been vindicated by future actions and I stand behind it. Then, now, and next year.

Quite clearly. The media, and some people here too.

Remember the majority of the media is too partisan to give President Trump credit for anything. Even if they were to agree with something they would still not admit it.

Right up until the general, maybe even after, but the mainstream R’s rejecting him helped.

Bernie supporters were like 75% Trump over Hillary. Wanted change. Maybe still do

True, but the media and the GOP did their best to paint him as one.

And he didn’t end up as a third party

It isn’t impossible yet, witness President Trump’s victory. But every cycle the bar gets higher for third parties.

I hope you are wrong and a good third party guy would be able to sway people from the insane polarization, but I am an optimist.

No one else could have made it though outside either party mainstream. President Trump was and is an outlier at all levels. For the Isaac Asimov fans, he is our mule.

At this point the electorate is utterly divorced from political cause and effect.

If you ask any of 99% of voters to define their party's platform you will get a deer in the headlights look and silence, or an answer you can't make sense of.

It has become so much Us Vs Them with the two major parties being the us and them that nothing any standard candidate says is going to move opinion much, or at all in most cases.

Even worse the mainstream of each party has become a distorting reflection of the other. Action wise there is little difference between them. Both want more power, more control, bigger government. Both parties say otherwise, but results and statements never match up.

Third parties have less chance now than ever before.

Ross Perot was a slap in the face to the GOP and they have fought any outsider ever since. Ralph Nader was the slap in the face to Democrats and they have fought any outsider ever since as well. Look at what they did to Bernie in the run up to 2016.

The two major parties are going to continue to do anything in their power to squash any candidate that does not toe the party line. Current example would be Tulsi Gabbard. She ripped into Kamala Harris punting her (Kamala) from 2nd to 4th and now Tulsi Gabbard is utterly ignored by the party and the media.

The culture of the USA has indeed changed a lot in my 74 years! And not for the better ! I have become less responsive to so called victims too

I agreed to a couple of those, "Got evicted, no place to stay, will help you on the farm."

No help, barfed on the carpet when drunk, ruined one good riding horse in just five minutes. So happy to see her go.

We have given thousands in charity to supposed friends. A few could actually do good work, but always needed more and more help themselves. Some stole from us. One of them murdered one of our horses in revenge for our failure to support her totally.

We completely support Trump on immigration and trade. Trump knows Sun Tzu, so what you see now may be different from what he is doing.

I'm not quite so ready to divorce politics and economics as independent things. As to whether or not there is "success," is this not an economic value judgment? Isn't the notion of success based entirely on whether or not one judges themselves to be in a superior position after some event in comparison to before?

As to the rest, if we want to coerce other nations, we go to war with them. Economic sanctions are to encourage and give clear choices, leaving coercion as a more serious response and only when necessary.

All trade policies are enacted with specific goals in mind.
Agreed, the goals are political, not economic. Events in both politics and economics are generally ambiguous so whatever happens, success is claimed.

N.Korea has the bomb, Iran is working on it. Whatever was used in tariffs and embargoes did not work. The economy of Iran is in bad shape, the leaders accept that as the price for the bomb - as for N.Korea where starvation is ok as long as the weapons are produced.

Kim's rhetoric immediately nose-dived
Yes. But he still has the bomb, aggressive military maneuvers and weapons tests appear undiminished.

China’s growth is the slowest in 40 years. WSJ attributes this to tariffs, but is quite critical of them.

All trade policies are enacted with specific goals in mind. If they accomplish those goals, they "work." Trump's goal with the trade tariffs on China is to lessen the trade imbalance and encourage China to play fairly and respect property rights. And with that goal in mind, they have worked. The Chinese government has been far more willing to condemn open IP theft (though they still have a long way to go). And the trade imbalance in dollar value has dropped. Not sure how else you want to measure "success."

Full trade embargoes have been highly effective on Iran, Cuba, and North Korea. They were even effective on Russia right after the Crimean invasion in severely hampering the Russian economy. Until the EU backed out. I'd strongly suggest that before criticizing the policy, you look into what the policy is and what the goal of the policy is.

I think you'll find that economic trade policies are one of the most effective tools available in diplomacy - if we choose to use them and use them consistently. Areas where they tend to be less effective are when the policy enforcement waxes and wanes depending on the current political climate. For example, we've had a trade embargo on North Korea going back decades. Bill Clinton undermined it by sending millions of tons of grain to North Korea for humanitarian aid. All that allowed North Korea to do was to keep making weapons instead of feeding their (literally) starving people. That policy was reversed under GW Bush and we saw a much more conciliatory North Korea. Then under Obama, we got a much more aggressive North Korea because of Obama's failure on the general foreign policy front. When Trump tightened things back up (and send nice little pictures of Kim standing next to a missile platform), Kim's rhetoric immediately nose-dived.

I'd be interested to see evidence that tariffs 'work'.
Anyway, not supporting my case but interesting-
quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/08/a...

I'd be okay with both ;)

That is my approach. If it is really important someone will tell me.

Yes

I think we are saying the same thing here.

Repealing the 16th would reduce the power of the Federal Government, so it might not matter who the nanny was.

Playing a fair game with a street fighter (China and the rest of the world) will get you killed.

If a country (e.g. China) wipes out a manufacturing capability in the US by investing (money and people), they can raise prices and keep the capability from coming back privately, indefinitely. No company can take on the Chinese government.

The scale and timeframe of this totalitarian war on the US can not be won on free trade alone. Not at least until we are all China, and they allow competition under and within their totalitarian regime, not without.

Fake news the enemy of the people.

"There are benefits from free trade even if only one side does it."

Short term benefits with grave long-term costs. Who does the current trade imbalance help when that trade imbalance is being used by Chinese corporations and individuals to buy up real American assets in real estate and stock? Who benefits when American companies invest millions and even billions of dollars in new technologies only to have them pirated by the Chinese and their technologies sold out from under them?

"Even complete trade embargoes do not work"

Whether it is Cuba, Iran, North Korea, or Russia, trade embargoes have been incredibly effective at "encouraging" policy change. If you think they've been ineffective, I'd ask you to cite some evidence.