- He’s a career criminal who knows how to rip off the American people, so he can watch out for crooks, kinda like Catch Me if You Can.
- He’s a convicted rapist who will treat our enemies like he treats his women. So far so good!
- He’s a traitor who is willing to shitcan the Constitution to his own ends, which is just thinking outside the box!
I share your fear, but I think MAGA would not have been possible, nor will be possible, without Trump. He is demagogue that comes along in a country only once in 100 or 200 years. Just as there would have been no nazi success without Hitler. I don’t think the GOP can simply generate a replacement.
Vance may or may not be worse, but he’s not charismatic. I think he could be successful because he’s smart and adaptable, but the choice will be his. He will not be able to lead MAGA qua MAGA.
I’m not sure that it grants him 100% immunity, but it has been an effective tactic against the idiot MSM, to be sure.
Although, to be fair, that’s delegation and a non-idiotic approach to the situation.
His “concepts of a plan” for healthcare, however, is unforgivable, especially considering the time he’s had to come up with something (himself or via delegation).
Correct, the brain stuff is when you go nuts, but pain and swelling at the wound site would be a “symptom.” Once it is seen that a bite has occurred, the vaccine must be given. /hijack
I’m really not sure if that isn’t too beholden to traditional assumptions of accountability and the like. Trump’s ‘explanations’ take the form of drawing onto hurricane maps with a sharpie, and it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.
Yes, when it comes to accountability, Trump is incompetent. I don’t think his sharpie dodges always get him off the hook, however. It’s not magic.
There is a superior authority, though: the governments, which have failed to take care of their citizens. They are what the “lemmings” are rebelling against, well, like lemmings.
Trump voters are pissed off against the government and economic system (which is endorsed by, regulated, and partially operated by the government). Are they wrong to be pissed? No. Are they being “competently pissed”? No. Does the Democratic party have a vision that, if implemented, would solve the set of problems that make people pissed. No. Mitigate it somewhat, perhaps a lot if done right. Is there a government somewhere that has “gotten it right” and whose solution we can implement here? No. That’s where we are at, and people are going to keep getting pissed and throwing out incumbents until something changes. That could take a very long time.
About the best that the Democratic party could do would be to recognize that this is the situation, form a narrative around it, and talk about how it is trying to mitigate the situation and formulate long-term solutions. That wouldn’t be a “wow!” message, but at least it would be far more honest than what we have now. E.g.: When Biden says we have best economy in the world, that doesn’t matter a whole lot when 75% of the American public doesn’t feel that that system is serving them well. (And, frankly, I don’t think Biden think in terms of anything I’ve written above. He remembers when the system largely did work [1945 -1970, roughly, with some spurts of success thereafter] and think we can adjust the knobs and get back to that. The same falsehood infects conservative thought as well.)
I mean, no argument there. But exactly this dysfunction is just going to be exacerbated by a Trump rule. (Not that I had high hopes for Harris doing some meaningful steps to challenge the status quo, but at least she wouldn’t have trampled all over what little efforts have been made.)
Yes, what you said about Harris here is what I was saying about the entire Democratic party above: “We try not to make things worse and occasionally make things better but have no vision for an overarching solution.” Trump offers people a false dawn of radical change. It’s bullshit, it’s a lie, but people want to believe in something. Hey, remember Obama’s “hope and change”? Uh huh. That was the nice, non-fascist version of the same rhetoric. Though Obamacare was incremental change in the right direction (IOW, the Democratic party at its best!).
It takes awhile. Look at Europe in 1848. No social media, much worse communications network (just the telegraph, pamphlets, and word of mouth, basically), but revolution was spreading like wildfire across the continent. And then we had major setbacks. Napoleon III is what Trump would like to be (not that he’s ever heard of him). But I do think there is up-racheting over the decades and centuries.
He’s incompetent and sick. The sick part is important because Trump is not a good delegator and, to the contrary, must be managed by his underlings. What is worse is that he is a control freak who doesn’t like to delegate, so when people try to bug him to do things, he’s out of so nothing happens. When he’s loony and slumped in a chair with his Diet Coke, that’s a lot of time wasted.
I recommended the strategem of waiting because that’s the best one for now. But we need contingency plans in place for when Trump overplays his hand or otherwise fucks up, since that’s an inevitability. I think we are seeing the blue state governors start to do that.
The trouble is that if that’s the direction he’s indicated so far, I’m not seeing this being any less dangerous than Trump.
He’s less dangerous because he’s less charismatic and lacks age and gravitas. But he’s smart and far less deluded than Trump, so he might adapt and do what is conducive to his own political survival and perhaps longer-term success: being a normal GOP president. No guarantee of that, of course.
Agree, with the caveat that different people in the GOP want different things. Some want “normalcy,” some would begin executions immediately. Trump himself is somewhere in the middle of that, probably more a hindrance to getting things done than a catalyst at this point.
It is worrying. I guess the thing that heartens me a bit is the number of failure points that have had to be penetrated in order for this to happen. You know the Swiss cheese model, right? Lots and lots of slices have been penetrated, the latest being the stupidity and complicity of the American people. IOW, I don’t think the system was intrinsically weak. But lots of individual GOP members have been moral cowards, allowing the party itself to snowball into a fascist insurgency. Then we have the feckless Supreme Court. None of this would have been thinkable until the year 2000. OTOH, we had deeply ingrained institutional racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., that have largely been rooted out and brought to the surface. Put another way, our current institutions would have held in 1925, but so would have segregation, etc. One could think of it as a kind of tradeoff.
I agree. Having the GOP in power is always no bueno. The question is how much above or below the average GOP damage will Trump cause. I doubt he will, by the end of this term, have done as much damage as Dubya did, which is inestimable.
Unfortunately he may not have to be; he can’t replace Trump but if they manage to lock in their control of the government it won’t really matter. You don’t need charisma once you’ve ensured the opinion of the populace no longer matters.
Even without blowback, which there would be, that would take a long time to accomplish, don’t you think?
The hard part has already been accomplished. Once Trump dies Vance can just step right into his shoes and he won’t even have to violate the law.
Trump’s cult of personality will die with him. It’s certainly not going to get inherited by an absolute dork like Vance.
I would really like to see an update of this thread by the OP. Do they still see the same positives as before?
OTOH the Thiels and Millers et al. are thinking that if they get to fully consolidate the machinery of disenfranchisement, with themselves anchored to the top, they will no longer need the cult.
A bold, risky move…
Yes, I’m curious how the OP feels his predictions held up.
OK, there was a request for where I think we are now, and here goes:
This is a matter of personal opinion, but I think that this has been better than a squeaker for us. Either way, Trump has gone crazy, but his babbling about a “mandate” and a “landslide” emphasizes what will be our message for a generation: all this shit is the Republicans’ fault.
My recommendation of this strategy is similar to what James Carville said early on, that the administration is imploding, and we only have to wait. I think that has panned out spectacularly. I didn’t even expect the Epstein thing to blow up this big. The Republicans are drowning in their own cowardice, sycophancy, and incompetence. They are not looking good for 2026.
This has been a mixed bag. Trump has been too demented and crazy not to say a lot of really dumb things, and the whole tariff game he’s playing is idiotic. But Trump has done some effective things. He’s got Europe spending more on defense to counter Russia, the move against Iran may have been a good one, and he ultimately is supporting Ukraine. He can’t be commended for the Israel situation, but I don’t know what his administration is doing behind the scenes for good or ill (and I don’t want to debate it, since I just don’t know enough to make any kind of value-added points. Personally, I think Netanyahu and his government are despicable). Trump hasn’t gone off the deep end and started new wars, etc. Hey, I’m not saying it’s ideal–far from it–but minus the really dumb Greenland/Canada annexation rhetoric (which was completely counterproductive as well), it’s along the lines of what I expected.
I’ve argued in a different thread that Trump is making no progress toward turning the US into a long-term authoritarian state, and I do think that a younger and healthier Trump would have had a chance at making it happen. I really don’t think Trump can last much longer in the job.
This seems more likely than ever.
Most of the OP was about the psychology (in the US and vis-a-vis the world) of Trump winning the popular vote by a palpable margin instead of just winning in the EC. I think what I wrote has mostly panned out, but I would also say that they weren’t particularly concrete or edgy predictions in the first place. More like low-risk, low-reward!
I’m not so sure. Looking at the project2025-tracker, 47% of its policy recommendations have been either partially or completely enacted in the 200 days since Trump took office, which seems rather effective and well organized if anything.
I think a key factor we need to recognize is that the problem isn’t just Trump. There’s also the Republican party.
I disagree with those who think that Trump has taken over the Republican party and it’s become nothing more than an instrument of his will. And that when Trump falls, the Republican party will fall with him.
My belief is that there are leaders within the Republican party who were in charge of the party before Trump appeared and they’re still around. They’re making plans for the future of the Republican party, not just for Donald Trump’s presidency.
In fact, I feel they are using Trump as a lightning rod while they quietly work in the background. Trump draws public attention and public opposition to himself and away from them. And at some point, they will turn on Trump in order to rehabilitate the party’s public image.
As for losing maga support, they don’t care. Their plan is to take control of the electoral process and when they’ve achieved that they won’t need to court voters anymore. They can just declare that they won the elections they wish to win.
I think that’s a bit of a different issue, however. We knew Trump was going to do damage, and he has. But he’s also imploding, IMO, and that wouldn’t have happened with a healthier and more competent but equally evil and destructive president.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but your solution seems to be “Sit back and do nothing, and the problem will take care of itself." I think that whatever setbacks Trump has encountered (which is not even close to near enough in my opinion) have happened because your advice is not taken. His wounds are not self-inflicted. They are inflicted by those that opposed him.
Very true.
Basically agree. A lot of what the GOP and individuals in it have done is just say, “Trump will give me/us my/our biggest chance at victory for now.” There are some true believers, but most are just cynics. That said, Trump’s “takeover” (more like a rebranding) has driven a lot of the more conscientious members of the GOP out of the politics entirely. And the GOP will be tainted with his stink for a long time.
The GOP doesn’t have strong public-facing leaders, and I am unaware of any “great men” lurking in the shadows. They are not going to be able to rehabilitate the brand or any other aspect of the party without a great deal of difficulty, as MAGA will be craving the Dark Side even as whatever responsible adults appear try to move away from it–or at least the image of it.
The GOP won’t be able to do this, especially without Trump. And Trump is not succeeding in moving us there (as I argue in the other thread comparing Trump to Hitler).
The Chinese stratagem does not require doing nothing–just nothing to stop the enemy from defeating himself.
I think Trump’s wounds are largely self-inflicted:
- The Epstein debacle is pretty much 100% self-inflicted.
- The DOGE mess is self-inflicted.
- The Big Beautiful Bill has polled as massively unpopular. Self-inflicted.
- Trump looking and sounding like an aging slob with dementia is all him.
- The unpopularity of ICE and their gestapo tactics is self-inflicted.
- Tariffs spooking the worlds of finance and business: self-inflicted.
- Pet Hegseth and others fucking up and saying dumb shit. Self-inflicted.
In none of these cases was the input of Democrats necessary or substantial. Rather, it’s all just Trump being a total fuck-up and hurting himself in polling. We shouldn’t be doing nothing, however*; we should be planning how to leverage this disaster for the benefit of the country and our own political prospects.
*Not saying we are, either. But people have been crying, “Do something!” when largely it’s been stuff that, under our shitty system, a rogue president has either the authority to do or the opportunity to do (even if eventually stopped). We’ve done some good things such as protest, and some Democratic politicians such as Newsom and Pritzker have spoken out, and there have been other efforts (such as the Texas Democrats denying quorum by fleeing), but really, beyond that, our only other option is revolution (which will probably be necessary even after Trump is gone).
A self-inflicted wound that does him far less damage than the damage DOGE did to, not only the nation but, the world.
But hey, if you gotta kill a lot of innocent people to do the tiniest bit of damage to Trump it’s totally worth it! AmIright?