What's clear - hardly new, though perhaps becoming ever more stark - is that voters will reward candidates for making imbecile statements and promises of imbecile actions that nobody with a brain expects them to live up to. And then in the next election the voters can rail about having been cheated yet again, poor things.

I do agree that, somehow, Trump has far more liberty to set his own course than other candidates, without being punished for it in the polls, which allows him to sound more reasonable on some things. On the other hand, there's the countless cases where it makes him sound insane and the idea of him in the White House profoundly scary.

But does he also advocate lifting that cap then? I have more respect for politicians - like Chris Christie - who acknowledge that they can't keep funding Medicare the way it works now since they aren't willing to raise taxes for it, than for politicians who steer well clear of threatening the sacred cow but never bother to explain how they'd fund it.



That was an attempt to be funny about your phrasing error, 'exemptions' instead of 'exceptions'. Agreed that Trump is among the more pro-choice Republicans, but as a foreigner I've never really considered abortion as a fundamental litmus test in politics to be honest.

You just can't compare. Since there are always more than two parties here, it's more complex and people aren't split as strongly into two camps - and our anti-immigrant right is usually centrist or even leftist on economic issues (not unlike the original fascism), while the most socially conservative voters are always the Muslim immigrants, who tend to vote for left-wing parties despite their progressive policies which they abhor. A bit similar to all those deeply conservative black voters in the South staying loyal to the Democratic Party, I guess.

I think many Europeans would, in fact, agree about the 'both sides do it' - personally, at least, I'd probably belong on the left wing of the Democratic Party on most issues, but all the same I'm often uncomfortable with the polarized, aggressively partisan rhetoric or stances of the American left. They're really not better than the right, it only seems better because we like the left's positions better. You'd have a hard time explaining the Daily Show and its popularity to most Europeans - it's only marginally less alien to us than Fox News shows.