The chap who created Retracement Levels, known here on Slope for many years as 2sweeties, wrote me recently about the U.S. presidential election. 2sweeties is from Italy, so he has an interesting perspective, and since the discourse on the campaign for the Republican nomination has devolved into comparing dick size, I thought this email would be worth sharing:
I was curious to hear your comments about what is happening in the States….
I watched some of the debates between Trump and the other republicans (and also what Hillary said about Trump…).You know in the early 90s in Italy we had a similar scenario: a guy called Silvio Berlusconi – he was a media mogul, was himself a showman, had built an empire based on real estate and media, he decided to become Prime Minister and self-candidate itself to the elections.
The Democratic Party was the largest party in Italy and thought Berlusconi would never be voted, they did not take him seriously.
Then they saw he had traction in the polls and TV: he said the same things Trump says – I am a successful entrepreneur, I will create a lot of jobs, I will fix the economy, professional politicians are not good and destroyed this country, etc.
It’s this type of game-changing thing where someone that is not a professional politician enters the arena and use their media ability and business success to capture the audience’s attention and convince them they are the best choice for the country because they know how to make things work.
Professional politicians start to fear him and try to make him look like the “bad guy”. They talk about him, instead of talking about themselves. They point fingers, but their finger is small. All their focus is on saying “he does this, he does that, he is not good”.
That is what Cruz, Rubio and Bush are doing with Trump in America. That is what Hillary Clinton is starting to do. If they continue, that is what will get Trump elected to President of the USA: his opponents are only capable of pointing the finger and say “he’s bad” and fail to recognize that people does not care about who’s bad (a bad guy in a show or a movie is a hero as long as he is “likeable”).
That is what happened in Italy, the opponents were all saying Berlusconi is bad, but people
reacted with their guts to what Berlusconi said, he touched the right nerves and said things many people agreed on. He swept aside moral and ethics from the debate, he said “hey we just want a country that works where everybody can make money and be happy and we know how to fix this mess”.
He got elected, by a large majority of votes, and stayed in power for the following 20 years during which he destroyed Italy – he did not fix anything, he plunged the country in a devastating recession.
I am mesmerized by watching the same show that we had in Italy 25 years ago, now you are getting it in the US.
As for me, I stand by my own election prediction, which I am certain will stand the test of time.
