“Strength through unity” has always been important to certain segments of the American populace.
And the German.
I’m all in favor of party unity. I have no problem with every Republican going down in the ship with Trump.
This. It wouldn’t matter if he did a header into a KFC bucket. His supporters would scream murder to the high heavens.
It will be interesting. One one hand, the Republicans have never had a leader with such charisma and such a devoted following. They do much better in elections when he is on the ballot (2020) and much worse when he is not (2018). I predict that Democrats will do much better in 2022 than expected because Donnie will not be on the ballot and many of his faithful will have no reason to turn out. On the other hand, nobody has united Democrats more than DJT. So when he leaves this mortal coil, Republicans lose a leader and Democrats lose a unifier. Maybe it all evens out and we’re back where we were before 2016.
Hmm. Has anyone run one of those actuarial tables/remaining lifespan quizzes for his age/BMI/past health history/family history?
As far as family history goes, Fred Trump lived to 93 and Mary lived to 88. Trump’s maternal grandfather lived to 88, and his maternal grandmother lived to 96. Trump’s paternal grandmother lived to 85. Trump’s grandfather Frederick only lived to 49, but he died of Spanish flu.
Trump has something but I wouldn’t call it charisma.
I also think people continue to overestimate Trump’s success at the voting booth. He was the nominee of one of the two major parties; he was guaranteed to come in first or second. And Trump didn’t come in first.
He didn’t get elected because he gets votes. He got elected because the Republican party has spend the least few decades rigging the system and Trump benefitted from their work.
Trump doesn’t have the ability to win an election. All he can do is make somebody else lose. And that’s all the power he holds over the Republican party.
Underlining mine.
True. However in a two-party system, that’s all that’s necessary.
We are fast approaching the point where the next vote may be the last one in the history of the United States of America.
If we were sure Trump would sink the Rs I’d be on board with watching him and helping him do that. But if he (and his at least de facto allies in Xi and Putin) succeed, we’re in very deep shit. Russian Roulette with a two chamber revolver is not a game I care to play.
My mistake. I wasn’t clear. I meant that Trump can make some other Republican lose.
That’s all the power Trump has. He can tell the Republican party “You either nominate me or I will make sure whoever else you nominate loses.”
The problem for Republicans is Trump’s 2016 “win” was a one-time fluke. Unlike Trump, they understand that nominating him again in 2024 will probably lead to a Democratic victory. So the Republican are looking at the dilemma of choosing between losing with Trump or losing against Trump.
I’m sure the biggest discussion going on in the back rooms of the Republican party is how to get past Trump. They want to remove his influence in a way that does the least damage to the party. I’m sure these party leaders would love to see Trump drop over dead.
Trump is oblivious to all this. He thinks he’s sitting in a position of power. I think he actually believes he has a future in politics.
I have repeatedly said that the Biden administration needs to make election reform (the real kind, not the Republican kind) one of his top issues. I put it second only behind dealing with the covid crisis.
Thanks. Now I understand your contention. I’m not 100% sure I agree with all of its implications, but it’s got a lot going for it.
IMO the 12 months surrounding the 2022 elections will tell us a lot about whether Trump himself is a spent force. OTOH Trump-like authoritarianism is just getting started.
Ref your comment about election reform, I agree 110%. The current administration needs to get that right or die trying.
Funny that maybe, just maybe, the biggest obstacle to US authoritarianism turns out to be Trump overstaying his welcome at the van of the movement. Its attraction has a finite lifespan with the current base. Maybe 10 years’ worth before it wanes. If Trump wallows ineffectually at the top long enough while also preventing anyone from climbing the greasy pole to topple him, the movement may die, or at least morph into ineffective 3rd party whining a la the Libertarians before the “competent Republican tyrant” we all worry about can emerge.
That may, in the long term, be the greatest service Donald Trump can provide for his country.
I wish I shared your confidence that 2016 was a one-time fluke and Trump cannot win the Presidency again. Sure he lost in 2020, but he increased his vote total and not just among old white people – he increased his percentages among both Black and Hispanic voters. He’s guaranteed the Republican nomination if he wants it. And who knows what the state of politics will be in three years – we could be in recession, Biden could have to step down due to health problems, etc.
The “Trump can’t win” magic spell didn’t work the the first time he ran, and it took a shitload of real effort to stop him the second time around. I would go with the latter as a plan-it seems to be based in reality.
We can’t know for sure, but I don’t think that the rise of tyranical authoritarianism we have seen in the GOP over the last several years would have happened sans Trump. I fully acknowledge that Trump was a symptom of an underlying disease, and that Trump supporters sans Trump would still be racist, amoral and undemocratic.
But before Trump the GOP seemed to want to go for a Plutocratic oligarchy where the federal government still went more or less as before, but with a large thumb on the scale to ensure that it did so with the interests of big business as its primary concern. They favored with Jim crow style electioneering to make sure that that didn’t change, and political propeganda to keep the hoi polloi from realizing they’re being taken to the cleaners. But the goal was to keep a permanent Republican majority under the current system.
Trump was the one who changed the game to being about a singular figure who wields autocratic power and attempts to transform the state into an instrument to serve him and only him. If you have any examples of strong autocratic tendencies within the GOP prior to Trump I’d be happy (well maybe not happy, but certainly interested) to hear them.
But we should stop acting like Trump has magic spells of his own that let him snap his fingers and win an election. If he did, he would have won in 2020. And Trump is a lot weaker as a former president than he was as an incumbent president.
We need to stop fearing Trump and start looking at him like he’s Jimmy Carter or George Bush Sr. Was anyone scared that those guys were going to make a comeback? No. We should start treating Trump like he’s another one-term failure.
What we need to worry about is the Republicans running somebody other than Trump. Whoever that person is, they’re going to look good in comparison to Trump and that person is a lot more likely to win in 2024 than Trump is.
People are so worried about Trump that they’re going to let Greg Abbott or Ron DeSantis or Josh Hawley slip in. We won’t be guarding against a regular Republican.
Agree completely that DeSantis here in FL is vastly more dangerous than Trump.
And DeSantis will be even more dangerous when is in the White House.
I don’t recall if this was discussed above in the thread because I read most of it too long ago, but which party has more to lose if Trump dies?
Democrats lose the best and most uniting supervillain ever who is a known and detested quantity, but…
Republicans lose a dangerous but profitable ally who motivates voters and raises lots of money (at the expense of sanity and rational behavior).
Basically, when no one is watching I expect the Republicans would rejoice more jubilantly than Democrats at the passing of Donald J Trump. He is a very high maintenance associate. My only concern is that he topple McConnell before he shuffles off this mortal coil, although it would be a nice touch if he can also make Kevin McCarthy into an empty suit before he departs this world. (To lie in State at his local McDonald’s restaurant.)
But would any of those three listed above (especially Josh Hawley) or any of that crowd be a unifying figure without Trump? Ted Cruz seems like a likely replacement for Trump too but can any two of these obvious clowns fool any of the people any of the time?? They seem destine to lock in the 38-41% of voters they already have within the first ten minutes and go down hill from there.
When their followers try to run a Democratic candidate’s bus off a road people will go to jail and no one will joke about them just offering an escort. When their boat parade sinks because they are a bunch of drunken assholes who refuse to follow simple safety rules it will be seen as the folly it is- not as a freedom parade.
It would be nice if Trump lives long enough to completely sabotage the 2024 Republican presidential nominee and drive the last stake into the corpse of the Republican Party, but I would not be sad to see him go before then either.
(For that matter, would the support of Donald Trump help or hurt a Cruz/Hawley ticket?)