So Trump has been impeached. We think we know what will happen in the Senate, but perhaps the political calculus will change at some point. Pelosi is holding the impeachment for at least a little while.
Meanwhile, Trump is not terribly popular. If the election were held tomorrow, he may very well lose. He is extremely popular with the people he has always been popular with, but has very little enthusiasm outside of that.
The Russians like their boy. If they can keep him in office, so much the better. So what is a Russian to do?
9/11
I believe that our current political climate is ripe for a Reichstag Fire type of event. We and the Russians saw how 9/11/2001 led to a popular coalescing of support behind a president with lukewarm support. It propelled that president to a second term and it was used to justify a world of sins for decades, up to and including today. This singular event still looms large in the public mind.
Trump has rendered parts of the national security apparatus ineffective through his erratic behavior and appointing people who are fundamentally incompetent to the job. He has also managed to lower public confidence in their institutions to keep them safe.
I feel all of this is coming together into a massive and highly dramatic strike that could exceed the impact of the 9/11 attacks. What if we had a literal Reichstag Fire and the capitol itself were burned? What if a nuke – dirty or otherwise – were set off on the National Mall, Times Square, The Chicago Loop?
If a bunch of plucky guys who live in caves in Afghanistan can pull off a spectacular attack like 9/11, what is to stop an actual nation-state from pulling off something even more spectacular?
I think Putin is just fine with the US tearing itself apart from the inside and wouldn’t benefit at all from a unified US suddenly turning its attention to a common enemy. There are pictures of Republicans wearing shirts that say they would rather be Russian than Democrat.
I think the bigger fear is what Trump might do if he feels he is at serious risk of losing the election next November. As you indicated, a war president isn’t likely to be voted out. I don’t think that history lesson is lost on those in power.
All I can say is I don’t think a 9/11 style attack would help Trump win. It would make him look weak and like a failure to the independent/middle votes. Question is, do any of the Democratic candidates inspire us as a person that will increase the safety of the US?
I think this would help the more centrist Dems like Biden, Bloomberg or Buttigieg. It would probably make things harder for Warren or Sanders. (I’m ignoring the rest of the field that has been in it for months and are polling below 5%)
I can’t imagine any scenario in which Putin would think it’s a good idea to have his fingerprints on a major attack on US soil, even indirectly supporting domestic shit disturbers. It would be provoking armed conflict with a major nuclear power. There’s just no way.
A major war might get Trump reelected, not necessarily because anyone likes him more, but because many voters might think “Don’t change horses in the middle of a stream.” The FDR-during-WWII reelection strategy.
A crime spree committed by illegal immigrants (perhaps false-flagging “illegal immigrants”, that is,) might boost Trump, just like how the migrant caravan last year might have helped the GOP a bit.
Trump is effectively a draft dodger with no real military support. A war won’t help him much against a moderate Dem. Bush carried a more military air and had a Hawk leader for his VP puppetmaster. FDR was a very different time and a very different war.
The crime spree by illegal immigrants would have to be real and not just a Fox News pushing an agenda, but if for some reason an illegal immigrant crime spree really materialized, that would end up helping Trump.
I think there can be major support for Trump in a war as long as it is perceived that the war wasn’t his fault or his causing. If North Korea suddenly launched an all-out invasion of South Korea in October 2020, and also launched some WMD-tipped missiles towards Japan at that same time, without Trump having done anything to poke Kim, I think you’d see both sides of the political aisle unite, temporarily, around a Trump-led war effort against Kim.
I agree with What Exit. If Trump wants to be saved by a war, it can’t involve North Korea (or Syria). There would be too many people saying he caused the war by his bungled foreign policy.
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan might do it.
The other scenario would be a major domestic incident. I’ve said before that I think the Trump administration is trying to cause riots in its detention centers in order to retroactively justify locking people up in those detention centers. Maybe somebody in the Trump administration is planning on pushing those riots to occur some time around next September.
I don’t think Trump, or anyone in his administration, believe that they need to resort to something like this. You’re overestimating the extent to which they are desperate. I don’t think desperation is an emotion Republicans are feeling right now.
Even in the Trump administration there has to be some awareness that things are not going well. For all his blustering about voter fraud, Trump must be aware he didn’t win the popular vote in 2016. And the four years since then haven’t been a triumph that has won him new support. Trump has to know that under normal circumstances he would be a one term President.
So I’m sure Trump thinks he has a trick up his sleeve that will fool the voters a second time. And it wouldn’t surprise me if he was thinking about starting a war because people rarely change Presidents during a war.
Do you think Trump is not aware that winning the popular vote doesn’t matter?
Yeah, there hasn’t been a “triumph” in your opinion. (To a lot of voters, regrettably, watching the left melt down over Trump’s presidency is a triumph enough.) But there also hasn’t been a calamity.
I don’t think Trump needs to start a war. In Dec 2011, Obama’s approval rating was 42% (Trump’s is 45%). Obama didn’t need to start any wars to get re-elected in 2012. Clinton is another example - maybe a better one, because he also didn’t win the popular vote. His approval ratings went up when he was impeached. If he had been allowed to run in 2000, he probably would have won.
The economy is roaring along, and Trump is the incumbent. It’s by no means a lock, but his chances of re-election are far from dismal.
Clinton DID win the popular vote, just not a majority of it.
But to the larger question. Yes, this thought has occurred to me as well. Perhaps some massive domestic terror incident that could be tied to Antifa types.
Missed the edit window on this but speaking to the larger question I’ve long said that I’d expect some type of domestic terror incident tied (by the trump DOJ at least) to the likes of Antifa. It doesn’t even have to be Russia. Some of trump’s supporters are nuts enough to do something like this, QED.
In 1992 he got less than 50% of the vote, but he did have the highest percentage.
Clinton had 43.0%, Bush had 37.4% and Perot pulled 18.9%. However, Clinton also got 370 electoral votes to Bush’s 168 and only 18 states. It was not in any way a close election, unlike Trump’s.