Putin hasn't been successful at all, albeit a victim of saudi economic aggression. The oil price collapse was the single biggest catastrophe for russia since the wall fell.
He's just been using war, nationalism and scapegoating (and assassinations) to shore up his domestic support while russia weathers the damage, and now he's back onto recovery
From an overall nuanced view Putin did very well at managing the crisis and fixing the economy that was put on the brink of recession by forces outside of his control. On the normal kneejerk bar by which politicians are judged by every natural disaster that occurs under their watch no matter how out of control it was, Putin did horrible

Trump has my blessing.
I am glad to have already made plans to leave the United States.

why bother, have you forgotten the Trump email to Kasich? Pence will be running issues both foreign and domestic while Trump makes america great again. one tweet at a time.

That is the view you would have considering anyone who disagrees with him is imprisoned or otherwise silenced. Russians abroad, here in the uk for instance, think quite differently of him. The people of NK worship Kim by all appearances. Does that make him a good leader?

One of the incredible things about these results is that Trump got a larger percentage of the Latino vote than Romney in 2012. Insane.

he outperformed across every minority from what i've seen compared to 2012 and (C)linton did not do as well. and bear in mind minorities are a larger % of the population now so this is a double whammy.
the GOP's yapping about him undoing their "progress" was proven wrong.

This post was edited by excellence on Nov 9 2016 12:58pm

The republican class is strongest ever since Reagan.

I think his populist message of getting the economy going, renegotiating trade deals, paired with being an incredibly blunt outsider overwhelmed the constant harping on his past bigoted statements.

This really is bewildering. I know many Trump supporters and I'm in an area of the country where he is popular, but I never thought his support was so widespread.

it was understated until election day due to it being politically/socially/career-wise suicide to even admit support for so many voters. i'm in an area where supporting Trump openly is grounds for stoning in many places.

As it should be.