"Blood Coming from Her Wherever"

[sundin13]

JWeinCom said:

sundin13 said:

The reason why Trump has been successful is not simply because he speaks his mind, but because most politicians around him look like puppets. They talk like an advertising group, playing to the base and pandering and using empty words. While Trump can be rash and ridiculous, he almost always sounds like the things he is saying belong to him, not some PR group with focus testing data. However, he is still ridiculous and seems like he would struggle to play anything politically with any tact whatsoever.

What I've seen from Bernie Sanders looks similarly like a guy who is authentic and adheres to his beliefs, although his ideas are less radical and he seems to better be able to handle things without flying off the handle...

I'd hesitate to call Trump succcessful.  In the early days of election season, it's pretty easy for a particularly flamboyant candidate to gather a large crowd.  I'd actually say the same, to a lesser extent, for Sanders.  Candidates that hit a niche hard are successful early on, but when more of the masses start to engage, things change.  I like Sanders so I hope his success is continued.  I have less hope for Trump.

To an extent though, isn't pandering kind of a good thing?  Elected officials are supposed to represent the interests of the people they govern.  Obviously you have to use information the general public does not have to filter some ideas out, but in a perfect world, shouldn't a candidate's views represent the people more than they represent himself?

Pandering has a bunch of flaws in a political situation. For one, it makes the candidate more unpredictable once they are actually elected. At that point, there is little benefit to pandering to the voters and we just don't know how they will act when they are given the chance to actually make decisions. Second, it makes all the candidates seem basically the same, which takes focus away from the things they say and more towards how they say them. Third, it creates a situation in which the extremes thrive, because a moderate who makes non-partisan decisions will not draw the support of the far right or far left. Fourth, in pandering, you don't represent the general public so much as a vocal extreme minority, because the general public tends to vote for the most publicised canditate wheras the minority not only helps to spread the candidate but they often vote for the candidate who is more typical, so while the average person may be more moderate, pandering pushes candidates towards more extremes...