Ball of shit, intended.
Pass? Just serendipity. 
OK, I’ll let it pass!
Yeah, this thread is getting a bit silly. DJT is the effective nominee at this point. The GOP convention still has to happen but he has completely taken over the party by booting Ronna McDaniel, installing Michael Whatley and Lara Trump as co-chairs and firing dozens of others deemed to not be loyal enough to him. No way these people will agitate for his removal under any circumstance. Yes, of course he could drop dead but I’m not banking on that.
DJT will undoubtedly become more unhinged and erratic as legal things fail to go his way. If James in NY manages to start seizing assets that will likely push him to be more outrageous with his statements. It will result in independents moving strongly away from him but what is left of the GOP will continue to keep him as the nominee. The MAGAts don’t get any of this and will stick with him to the bitter end.
It’s entirely possible for him to become the nominee in March and not be the nominee by November.
Only if he dies or has a massively disabling medical issue. Other than that, I don’t agree.
He has gifted his cultists and family members control of the RNC. They will not move to replace him no matter what, other than the two issues I mention in my first sentence.
Okay, okay, I’m not just trying to joke around now. I think some type of implosion is about to happen, but even the most realistic, normalish imagination of what will happen if Trump becomes the nominee is pretty implosiony:
- GOP Civil War continues, but nothing too big happens. No more motions to vacate.
- Trump keeps saying more and more (quantitatively and qualitatively) crazy shit, but it somehow doesn’t cross the line. Or even if it does, the standard MAGA excuses apply.
- Trump’s dementia keeps getting worse and augments point #2, but oh well.
- Trump can’t pay his $500 million bond, but somehow he muddles along financially.
- None of Trump’s trials actually happen, including the one in NY (criminal, not fraud, which already happened), it’s like, oh well. He isn’t convicted before the convention.
- Trump looks like warmed over shit, but he limps along. Spray on more orange. Good enough.
- The convention, um, occurs. Remember the last one in 2020? It’s not better than that! Crazy, Boebert-eyed freaks drool over their bulbous, misshappen, wizened, and miscolored God Emperor, but there is no platform other than “Trump Banzai!” And that’s OK. Eldritch, Goebbels-inflected speeches and screeches wring out across the benighted MAGA masses, but the MSM just says, “Meh, hmm, Trump.”
That’s the best-case scenario, right? And, I, dunno, don’t think it sounds all that great for Trump, the GOP, and their electoral prospects.
If the above happens, I will say–right here–I was wrong! They held the line, as Toto prescribed. They did it! And now that they’ve done it, they will proceed to plummet to the earth in flames.
You seem to think the MAGA faithful care about any of the things you listed. They don’t. All they care about is owning the libs. They love DJT because they hear him talking about hurting the groups they hate - immigrants, trans/LGBTQ, non-white, non-Christians, etc. For those reasons they will support him until he keels over. And the “regular” GOP or RINOS are terrified of losing the MAGA base so they will also support him until he keels over.
HE OWNS THE PARTY. His flunkies are in charge. The money issues you mention in #4 will vanish because he can now raid the coffers of the party.
What makes you think I think that? 
Yup, Trumpism 101.
Here I disagree. They will support him until they think he–or affiliation with him–will cause their own loss.
I 75% agree. Look at the disorder in the House, however, and you may wonder why he can’t bring order–or at least obeisance–to that shitshow.
But yeah, these fools have hitched their wagon to a bolide and are riding it all the way down. What’s really delicious is not just their impending loss in November but their nuked, radiation-poisoned, and twitching state thereafter (with Trump’s eyes still glowering from the mushroom clouds, lol!). The party will truly be dead and irrecoverable at that point.
I think that’s one of the things that will cause the implosion. They don’t have enough money to pay his legal bills–not without it crippling them financially.
The problem is that just about everything people have put forth opposing this idea you have twisted around to support your “implosion” theory. What would it take for you to change your mind-what evidence/event would convince you?
If Trump is the nominee at the end of the convention, then I will say I am wrong.
Cults historically have a shelf life. Trump has skated and avoided consequences—thus far. The fact that this is so is not evidence that it will continue till he dies. The fact that his cult members currently view him as a god-like strongman, impervious to external forces doesn’t make it so.
He’s a classic conman and cult leader. There’s no reason to believe he’s the one, the only one, that will last forever. And there’s plenty of evidence we’re reaching his sell-by date quickly.
“He will never be convicted.” “MAGA will never diminish in their influence and support.” And why would that be? Because it hasn’t happened yet?
Don’t give this garden variety grifter more credit than warranted. That doesn’t mean let up in the fight. It means don’t despair.
I don’t think anybody is saying that. All political movements diminish over time.
This thread is about whether MAGA’s influence will dry up before Trump becomes the GOP nominee.
Recent Presidential elections have been very VERY close. I think there are game-theoretical reasons for this. This closeness means that a 269-269 is likelier than one might guess. The result of a 269-269 tie will be Red victory given present circumstances.
The 2020 election was closer than the 2016 election!
First note that the Popular Vote is irrelevant. POTUS is chosen via electoral votes, not popular votes. As few as 21,500 Biden voters switching to Trump (10.3 Wisconsin, 5.9 Georgia, 5.3 Arizona) would have given Trump a 269-269 tie and the 2020 victory.
Clinton needed 38,800 vote switches for victory in 2016 (22.2 Penns, 11.3 Wisconsin, 5.3 Michigan).
Many smart people think Trump’s latest candidacy is doomed and of course I hope they’re right. But please do NOT get over-confident.
In this thread it has been asserted that the MAGA cult and the GOP will not take back their support until Trump keels over. Nope. He may well make it to the election, but it ain’t a sure thing by a long shot. He gets convicted, he shits his pants on stage, whatever.
The notion that Trump, out of all of history’s grifting cult leaders, will skate is wrong, and the OP’s theory, while no sure thing, is a real possibility.
That’s a statistical question I’m sure is complicated, and I’m not competent to perform the analysis. I’ve seen accomplished statisticians argue over whether Nate Silver’s methodology in 2016 was correct, and it’s been debated on this board as well. I argued that it was not, but from the angle of presentation of information, since that’s more my line as a translator / interpreter / advertising writer (yes, I argued the statistical side too but didn’t really present my own original arguments).
I think the key difference between 2016 and 2020 is that people in general and the media in particular really thought Hillary was going to win, and it was a shock (to put it mildly) when she didn’t. In 2020, the polls were favoring Biden, not Trump, and Biden won. But it was not portrayed as a sure thing beforehand. Thus, the 2016 election seemed “closer.”
Of course not. And as I said above, this is going to be a decades-long effort to repair our country. We only have one real political party right now.
Yes.
Trump has about 10 major factors against him right now that would be instant political death for any other candidate. The feeling that he is immune to such a demise has been grandfathered in by seeing him defy written and unwritten rules thousands of times since 2015. Thus, the feeling also arises that nothing can stop the man.
My insight is that it’s all about to come apart. It will be a very quick death spiral, since the media will no longer be complicit, and the feeling that this guy is a loser will be in the air, and looking like a loser is the surest thing to turn off his fascist cult members, which in turn will brand a deeper, blacker L on his forehead…
Yep. Again, while not a sure thing, it is by no means a long shot.
And this year, if Trump were to win these same states back from Biden, the result would be an EC victory for Trump due to reapportionment.
I’m not the only one who’s imagined a sort of remote-control Trump, clumping around on stage like Frankenstein’s monster after he’s dead, right? Propped up for photos at conventions? Dipped in gold or in a coffin like Lenin?
My feeling (I won’t call it something so solid as a prediction) is that it’s until he’s no longer capable of speechifying. That doesn’t necessarily mean death, but it does mean that he has it for as long as he wants it. I do not think a criminal conviction would do it unless he ends up in jail or, in the case if house arrest, explicitly forbidden from holding press conferences and using the Internet.
Short of that, what external pressures are there? Republican old guarders are retiring en masse and there are enough Gaetzes and Greenes in safe districts to keep a chokehold around the neck of the rest of the caucus.
The only move they have is the one move they’ve always had. Dump Trump, swallow a few cycles of losses while he rages, and act as a bipartisan coalition with Democrats to actually govern. Without the ability to poison pill every piece of legislation, the splinter movement dies. But it would take a lot of current Congresscritters with it and that’s a higher price than they’re willing to pay.
It’s the world’s longest prisoner’s dilemma. They can get rid of him, but only if they all agree to get rid of him. And the process of getting rid of him would create opportunities for unknown junior critters to suddenly become loud voices in MAGA land, raking in the commensurate donations.