That was a good distinction - thank you for clarifying that.
This article discusses her desire to stay in the race and whether the donors will keep giving or abandon her as a lost cause. The Kochs are rolling out commercials and ads, but will it be enough? This bit cheers me up a little: "“The longer she hangs around and the more Trump focuses on her, the greater likelihood you get unforced errors,” said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. “She’s giving ammunition to Biden’s campaign.”
The same thing that caused Putin to, in 2008, step down from the presidency, at least on paper, after his second term. Their constitution required it, and the hard work of consolidating power was incomplete.
Trump is not as hard a worker as Putin, and American institutions, like the courts and media, are more resilient than in Russia.
He conceivably can install a toady successor, as Putin did. But I doubt he is that good at the caudillo thing. We are very lucky that the most authoritarian of American presidents is so old.
In some of these threads, I see the comparable of Germany, where the collapse of democracy was indeed complete and rather sudden. But the German example was a parliamentary system. Things go faster there. The better comparisons are with presidential systems, like Russia and Brazil.
For Trump to become a real dictator, he’s got to shut down independent media big (CNN) and small (The Atlantic) and very small (Straight Dope). In his first term, he made zero progress. With independent media still in place and criticizing, the Supreme Court and Defense Department will hesitate to fully shred the constitution.
So Nikki does have a chance in 2028, even if Trump wins in November.
.
Okay, even for the wild patchwork quilt that is US election law, this is screwed up. What is even the point of the primary? Why would anyone sign up for that, and why does the state spend money on it?
Look at what happened to all those other candidates he endorsed. For whatever reason, he can stir up support for himself but he seems to be poison for anyone else.
Though I guess it makes sense that his skills lie solely in self-promotion and he struggles to boost anyone else. He has so much experience in helping himself and so little in helping others, even when it’s to his benefit.
Think of it this way, if Haley knows she’ll get trounced by Trump in Nevada and won’t get delegates anyway, by running in the primary she (1) can’t be said to have lost in a contest she didn’t enter and (2) would almost certainly win the primary and can use that as a talking point for people who don’t know better. It makes a weird kind of sense.
I wonder if there’s some weird technicality that requires the state to hold a primary despite how meaningless it is, and maybe the campaigns pay for at least some of it so there’s money to be made.
“I won a contest that doesn’t matter, and didn’t have any other competitors” really sounds more like a Trump boast to me! Except he’d say “Biggly won”, and repeat himself a few times.
Why does he need to shut down independent media? One of the core aspects of the Putin regime pre-2022 was it’s “managed” media ecosystem. There were plenty of genuinely independant outlets inside of Russia doing good on the ground reporting and the internet was never really blocked so Russians also had access to both Russian and English language conversation hosted outside of Russia. The bulk of their social media was coming from Telegram which made rather explicit moves to be outside of the control of the state.
It turns out none of that was of particular concern for Putin. He simply flooded the information space with so much chaff that independant media was never more than a bothersome mosquito in his side, he consistently gathered 70+% approval ratings from even extremely reliable and admired pollsters within Russia. Apart from Navalny, Putin’s biggest threat from any independant movement was actually a welfare reform bill that angered the oldies who actually hold a base of power in Russia. It was only after Ukraine became a quagmire that independant media became enough of a problem that Putin finally ended it and it died with a pretty pathetic whimper.
All the right wing creeps in the US have been learning the entire playbook from Russia and enough of the principles were figured out from experimentation natively as well that none of the tactics are unknown any more. Journalists like Michael Hobbes have shown over and over again how mainstream centrist “liberal” media is lead by it’s nose over and over again by right wing creeps without breaking much of a sweat. Right wing trolls have gotten so bored of the process, they’ve started essentially performing the cup and ball routine with clear cups just to make it even fun any more. Christopher Rufo laid out in detail on Twitter exactly how he would get Claudine Gay fired before he even started it and then laid out step by step how the mainstream liberal media would react in the exact way he wanted them to and they still fell for it.
I think many Americans who have never spent time outside of the first world are going to be bitterly disappointed in how little Trump needs to actively oppose the independant media and have it still not matter.
The primary is a new thing for this election. The state was trying to switch from caucuses to primaries, but the state Republican Party decided it didn’t want to use the primary results and kept its caucus. There will only be a primary on the Democratic side.
A lot of people would say “no way” … but I bet if you could read the Kochs’ minds, they’re happy to trade a second Biden term in the short term for a more traditional Republican president in 2028. I think Haley’s biggest donors right now aren’t concerned with whether or not she gets the 2024 Republican nomination. Instead, Haley’s run is an opportunity to flake some chunks off of Trump’s hide from a “safe distance” – something few Republican politicians with careers on the line feel free to attempt.
It may be my fault, but this sounds like another thread. Is there an old one, I should look at, on the alleged Republican bias of the Associated Press and so forth?
Apologies, it’s mainly documented in his twitter and the two podcasts he does: If Books Could Kill and Maintenance Phase. There’s not really a centralized place where it’s collected so it was hard to link to. He’s not the only commentator to have made the same observations though.
She definitely should stay in-
- she is sucking $$ out of trumps donation pool.
- trump having to focus on her, and he jabs at trump is good for Biden.
3.trump is not in good health, making her the obvious choice if something happens.
I suspect that Haley will secede from the presidential race within a few weeks, as is her right.
Damn, dog.
In addition to the points you made so cogently, there is the likely aid-to-Trump to be found in the war or wars he will almost certainly start. (And deny having started, of course.)
Martial law is an extremely handy tool for anyone who wants to suppress dissent.
If Trump’s enablers think they can get away with imposing martial law for something less than a foreign war, they will do so. “Black Lives Matter is threatening us all,” for example. But if that doesn’t look as though it will sell, they’ll go elsewhere. It depends 70% on what Big Money wants (the corporations and other billionaires) and 30% on what the white-supremacists in the military want. (Regardless of any allegiance to civilian control by those currently at the top of the military, if enough guys in the middle want the guys at the top gone, they will be gone. If enough guys in the middle are true believers in Trump as God’s Instrument, it could happen.)
Public opinion will depend not only on the information available under martial law, but on the degree of fear of retribution against those who dissent from whatever Trump wants to do.
Yes, of course all this is pooh-poohed by many. Foolishly. The old ‘it hasn’t happened here yet, therefore it can’t happen’* reasoning will hold for a while.
.
.
* supplemented by ‘most Americans value and will work to uphold liberal democracy’ reasoning, of course.
.
Nikki Haley, I’m guessing, will do exactly what the corps and billionaires want–turning Social Security into a profit-making enterprise for some lucky oligarchs and all the rest of it. But she won’t be up for what the military/law enforcement Trump worshippers want. She won’t work to achieve white supremacy, nor will she put much energy into suppressing dissent. And she won’t seek to be made Pres-for-Life.
So there’s that.
This gets to whether, if she was nominated, I should vote for her. Probably I wouldn’t. But it should be because of what she actually says, not guilt by association by being in the wrong political party.
Tell me if I am wrong about this, but I think you are alluding to social security privatization such as was advocated by Paul Ryan. Although my link doesn’t say this, it’s reasonable to see his plan as an almost certain boon to the likes of Charles Schwab and Fidelity, and a possible boon to wealthy financial advisors charging high fees AKA oligarchs. The pressure to let Americans gamble “their money,” that they can’t afford to lose, on actively managed mutual funds, individual stocks, and bitcoin, would prove unstoppable. So I’m probably on your side with privatization.
BUT – Googling, I can’t find Nikki advocating this. And if there was any time she would advocate it, it would be now, when she is trying to appeal to conservative primary voters. What she would say in the general election campaign would be more indicative of how she would govern, and she surely would not say it then. I would base my November vote on that.
I’m a never-Trumper, in that Trump’s character flaws mean there’s no way I would vote for him against Biden, or any other plausible Democratic candidate. But I’d try to keep an open mind with Nikki.
IMO, any politician who has not unambiguously in word and action repudiated Trump and the current state of GOP politics, including Haley, is unfit for office. And I don’t mean lukewarm “He’s lost a step and attracts chaos” bullshit. Our democracy is in peril and everybody has to pick a side.
Her policy proposals cannot possibly be attractive enough to offset her deliberate association with an evil movement.
Exactly. “Never Trump” shouldn’t just mean not voting for Trump - it should mean strongly opposing any politician who hasn’t strongly rejected and denounced the un-American words and actions of Trump.
Beau of the Fifth Column put out a video on why Haley is saying she won’t drop out, and why he believes she should stay. He brought up something I’d neglected to consider.
Sure, staying in is good if Trump drops out or somethign changes and he starts losing, as she gets a leg up on those who have to restart their campaigns and didn’t get any delegates.
But it also works if Trump stays in, assuming he loses the general election. Because then she’s the heir apparent in 2028. In addition, with how she’s running now, she can even push the “I told you he couldn’t win.” aspect, saying “You should have picked me.”
So, for Haley, it’s kinda win-win. Either she gets to be the nominee, or she’s setting herself up to be the nominee in 2028. Heck, she may have better chances then, as Trump may try to torpedo her chances in the general if he loses the primary.
And it’s not like she’s spending her own money.