Given that Trump supporters seem to live in a bubble, where everybody they know, plans to vote for Trump; I wonder how many actually will. It’s one thing to talk in the break room, the corner bar, and in the college caf about how Trump is the only possible choice, and anybody else is just blowing smoke; but that’s in public. When the rubber meets the road, and it’s just one voter in a private booth, faced with “DeSantis, Haley, Trump,” on a ballot, that voter who talks Trump up in the break room, just might choose someone who is not Trump.
Oh, of course, they’ll say otherwise later. “I voted for Trump, naturally. It was those RINOs who caused Haley to win.” Meanwhile, they voted for Haley. But they won’t admit it; they’re Trump all the way, Trump yeah, Trump always. So they say in public. But in secret, they voted for Haley.
That could explain the 2016 Iowa caucuses—Trump led in the polls, then lost to Cruz. (And damn the bad luck, turns out that was rigged, too, according to Trump. That poor bastard can’t catch a break.)
The Iowa caucuses are one of the few state nominating conventions where I’ll concede the results often are rigged – or at least gamed because the process is so opaque. They should be burned to the ground.
"What I was going to say,” said the Dodo in an offended tone, “was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race.”
“What is a Caucus-race?” said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that somebody ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.
“Why,” said the Dodo, “the best way to explain it is to do it.” (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)
First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (“the exact shape doesn’t matter,” it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no “One, two, three, and away,” but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out “The race is over!” and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, “But who has won?”
This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”
Haley’s problem is that the Republicans are expecting Democrats to elect her.
The white men who form the base of the Republican party want to vote for a white man. So they’ll vote for Trump, or if need be, DeSantis. They have this imaginary plan that Democrats will vote for a minority women, regardless of what party she belongs to. This is projection of their own prejudices; they figure Republicans vote for white men so Democrats must vote against white men (and right wing media feeds this delusion).
If that’s the case, what she fails to understand, like most Republicans, is that most Democrats base their decisions on critical thinking plus the state of the world beyond their own noses and immediate, selfish needs.
No, I’m talking about the House intelligence investigation under Devin Nunes:
The Senate investigation under Richard Burr:
The other Senate investigation under Lindsey Graham:
Trump appointee Rod Rosenstein’s investigation:
After Rosenstein took over, Graham and Nunes changed course so they could keep their jobs, blaming the investigations on Democrats when talking to their electorate. Tweren’t true.
Generally speaking the closer you get to Trump, the more you hate his guts. He’s a terrible boss: he expects loyalty and gives none. Most Republican congressional reps are sick of the drama, with the prominent exception of those who are all about messaging and clueless on policy. I don’t know whether most of the GOP caucus are exactly praying though: political professionals typically learn to accept things as they come.
What about the base? Maybe 5% of registered Republicans at most respect the constitution enough to want Trump’s disqualification. The remainder are jabberers. I base that number on the RCP polling average showing combined support for Christie and Hutchinson in the GOP primary at 4.1+1=5.3. In truth this is an absolute upper bound. A better approximation might be Hutchinson’s performance during the Iowa Caucus (Christie had dropped out). Ok, it’s a noisy estimate, and yeah the Iowa GOP is pretty MAGA, and sure caucus goers aren’t exactly representative, but then again we can’t be certain that all Hutchinson supporters would favor Trump’s disqualification.
Anyway Hutchinson got 1/5 of a percentage point in Iowa. So maybe around 0.2% of Republicans support democracy. Five percent at most. But they are not proximate to Trump; I’m not either.
I don’t feel that’s true. I consider myself a centrist and I believe there are many other people like me in this country. I feel that the Republicans represent conservatives and the Democrats represent centrists and liberals.
I agree that there are more centrists than commonly depicted. What’s rarer are politically engaged centrists, like I consider Little Nemo to be. (I’m not saying he’s an activist (though he could be), merely that he follows politics.)
ETA: Good point below about the decline of informed a la carte politics.
By “centrists” I meant people who consider themselves between where the two parties are at the moment. Voters who really could vote for either party race by race or election by election. Which might better be termed “independents” by their voting records.
I chose “centrists” purposely to call attention to the vast gulf between the parties as of today and the paucity of people who can plausibly endorse various people and policies of both sides on an a la carte basis.
I think that is a bad definition of “centrist” because it implies to anyone that doesn’t know what you actually mean that one party is as far to the left as the other party is to the right.
