They don’t care about specific legislation. They care about how many people show up on Election Day to vote Republican. And Trump does that better than the old guys. Yes, Biden still managed to beat him, just barely, by about 44K combined votes in GA, AZ, and WI. But Trump mobilized huge numbers of new voters that the old school Republicans couldn’t even dream of. Had Biden been running against Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, John Kasich, Rick Santorum, etc., Biden’s victory wouldn’t have been a nail biter. It would likely have been about the size of George HW Bush’s victory over Dukakis back in 1988. I’d go so far as to say Clinton would have won against any of those guys back in 2016.
ETA. Bush over Dukakis in 1988 is a bit of an exaggeration. But Obama beating McCain in 2008 is realistic. That type of beat down, repeating every 4 years, is what Republicans were staring at without Trump.
So a politician works to get more people to vote for him? OMG I now see why Trump is evil. Surely no Democrat would ever try to get more people to vote for the Democratic candidate. The horror.
It’s orthogonal to whether or not any particular politician is evil. Trying to get more votes doesn’t make any politician evil. The way in which they go about it may or may not.
“They” (meaning the moneyed interests) only care about people showing up to vote Republican because that leads to specific legislation. They want their tax cuts and subsidies and other corporate welfare. And if the Republicans can’t deliver that any more, why would they care about the Republicans?
Kind of. I realize this is continuing the hijack, but figured I’d briefly give my thoughts on this. Personally, I think Russian (and Chinese, which is often overlooked in these discussions) involvement in trying to screw with the election had little to do with Trump (or Hillary, or Biden) and more to do with attacks on our core systems and democracy. Both Putin and Xi want…even need…to attack the fundamentals of the US, to prove that their own systems are superior, or simply to distract us by getting us to do witch hunts or question our very system. And it worked in both cases…people openly question the elections, openly are skeptical of the results, and feel like the system is broken and doesn’t work.
It’s a massive win for Putin and Xi for relatively little effort. I wouldn’t be surprised if Putin, at least, deliberately had possible Russian involvement leaked just for this reason, as this would be more his thing (Xi and his merry band have other goals), as well as gave the impression Trump was his buddy or pawn or whatever.
Anyway, that’s my thoughts on this, and I’ll bow out now as I am definitely hijacking this thread. All I’ll say wrt OP is…if the Republicans could just declare themselves winners by fiat in state elections then they certainly would do that…so, it will be self-evident.
IMHO they (the moneyed interests) care more about preventing the Democrats from doing things that hurt them than having Republicans do things that help them. They’re more than capable of helping themselves as long as they don’t have a Democratic government passing laws they don’t like. They’d be perfectly happy with a do nothing Republican POTUS and legislature.
They still get all that. They are simply changing their tactics to no longer try to convince voters that tax cuts for the wealthy and corporate welfare are good for them, and instead sell them on identity politics, convincing their voters that giving money to the wealthy is an equitable exchange for ensuring continued focus on white supremacy.
Though, they are even starting to lose in that regard, hence the voter disenfranchisement and suppression.
Well, yes and no. The sane and non-idiotic among them realize that Democrats will at least occasionally win, and pass laws that they don’t like. In order to be able to maintain their situation, it’s not enough for their party to not pass new laws-- They also need to be able to repeal old laws. And the current Republicans can’t do that, either.
I strongly disagree. There are lobby groups donated tens of millions of dollars to political campaigns. These are businessmen. They aren’t doing this out of some abstract ideological motive. They are doing it because they see it as an investment. They expect to receive more money then they are paying.
And these are not the sheep that can be moved by empty promises. Any official who does not promptly deliver once in office will find the money will be redirected to replacing him with a more effective official.
I also disagree with this. If Biden had been running against a different Republican incumbent in 2020, his victory wouldn’t have been a nail-biter; it would have been a defeat. He would have lost like Mondale did in 1984, Dole did in 1996, Kerry did in 2004, and Romney did in 2012. Incumbent presidents usually win re-election to a second term. Trump’s failure to do this shows he is a weaker campaigner than most candidates.
Maybe I missed it, but this nightmare scenario could have always happened at the federal level:
Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members
So, if one party controls Congress, it could control it forever. Hey, the Republicans win 300-135 vote majority in 2022? Nope, fraud. Dems won all of those seats.
I think that’s where all this stuff about “we have the cops and the military and the guns and the tanks on our side” comes from. They understand that if they seize the government unlawfully, the other side will fight them, resulting in millions of lives lost, families divided, trillions of economic value vanished, and our entire way of life destroyed–they just think they’ll emerge victorious after a decade or so of battle.
On PBS Newshour last night David Brooks (around 7:30 in vid) kept on insisting that “study after study after study” shows that voter suppression doesn’t actually suppress votes.
Only time I’ve ever said to the TV “cite, bum”.
This may or may not be true, but what is definitely true is that a member of the Republican party can’t get elected unless they have Trump behind them 100%. We can argue how large it is but it is undeniable that a portion of the Republican electorate are fanatic Trump devotees who will do whatever he tells them to. If told them that the the Republican primary was a fraud and that they should stay home on election night a large proportion of them would do so and that would be enough to scuttle any would be Republican successor. Trump know this and would not be at all shy about using it as leverage to get whatever he wants from the Republican party.
So if Trump isn’t the Republican nominee it is either because:
A) something has changed between now and then (say release of Trump video from Epstein’s vault) that fundamentally changes Trump’s popularity as a candidate
B) Trump doesn’t want to run (either because he’s too old and lazy or because he’s been bought off) and offers his full support for the chosen candidate.
C) A powerful cabal in the Republican party decides that its better to sacrifice the presidency to a Democrat than to have another 4 years of Trump, and then somehow manages to rig the primary.
Sure, possible, except that there aren’t any prominent Democrats tweeting about how they’re going to do just that.
Or because he’s dead. I’m not saying I wish it, but let’s face it, he’s a very old man, with many unhealthy habits. Natural death sometime before the next election is, actuarially, a non-negligible possibility.