And the Republicans painted Obama, who was a normal Democrat- as an African-born terrorist that was married to a transgender man.
Are you suggesting they should’ve endorsed the opposing candidate? I’m not a big fan of negative campaigning but it’s not like Democrats hold a monopoly on that tactic, and I think the negative points used against Romney that you describe were pretty mild and short-lived as such things go. The 47% leaked tape had more traction and was more damaging as it exposed how out of touch he was with regular people.
The one thing he said that didn’t gain the traction that it should’ve, when talking about the difficulty recent college graduates had in finding employment - he said that if a young person couldn’t find a job they should just borrow twenty thousand dollars from their parents and start a business.
It’s possible that Romney was the catalyst for Trump, in that the Republicans realized that while they needed a multimillionaire tycoon in the highest office to protect their interests, they needed one that could con the downtrodden and poorly educated. It has nothing to do with a gaffe about binders that made the news for a couple of days.
My apologies, I made the mistake of replying immediately after reading Sam’s post without reading to the end of the thread, and I somehow missed first note. Won’t happen again.
I recently read a book set in WW2 France, and it had the following quote -“Evil moves slowly, then all at once”. We are about to find out what that means.
Nothing that happens to Trump will make any difference now, the walls have been breached. Timely action by our legal and judicial system might have made a difference, but they were too weak and cowardly to act decisively when it might have mattered…….even mainstream Republicans were horrified by January 6th when it happened, he should’ve been taken out of the White House in cuffs the next day….but almost 2 years of complete and total inaction by a negligent DOJ changed the landscape and now Trump plays January 6th footage at his rallies while mainstream Republicans cheer.
While I was pleased to see a special counsel appointed, it’s inexcusable that the appointment wasn’t made 18 months earlier.
Trump’s immune now, nothing will happen to him. The Republicans will win the House, Senate and White House in 2024. Every investigation and prosecution of Trump and Republican misdeeds will be terminated on January 21st 2025, and every person convicted of January 6th crimes will be pardoned. Then the investigators, the Alvin Braggs and Jack Smiths, will be persecuted and will have their lives destroyed as a warning to anyone who might challenge the rights of Republican politicians to break the law with impunity.
The rights of women’s and minorities will be dragged back into the 1950’s, and it will happen surprisingly fast.
Don’t bring a pillow to gun fight next time, if there is a next time.
I don’t have anything substantive to add to some of the excellent analyses that have been posted here. I just want to say that I subscribe to the “pendulum” theory of American politics. It does tend to swing between extremes. Those who claim it’s never been this extreme before are correct in part, as many recent events like the Jan 6 insurrection and the whole idea of a mentally deficient psychopathic narcissist becoming president are certainly unprecedented. But extremism is not new, nor is the idea of ruthless politicians exploiting extremist public sentiment for personal gain, whether by cunning or just dumb luck. McCarthyism was a real plague ravaging America that was, arguably, at least, every bit as damaging as Trumpism. And like Trumpism, it was largely based on completely fabricated self-serving lies. That’s not new, either. But America recovered. I’m cautiously optimistic that it can recover again.
The USA has certainly never swung to the extreme left by any reasonable objective definition, but it has embraced social-democratic policies at important times, as with FDR’s “New Deal” and its social programs and financial regulation, and later, the implementation of Medicare under Johnson, but which actually had its roots back with Eisenhower. I guess what I’m saying is that the US political system has a way of swinging towards total insanity and then, somehow realizing it, swinging back towards normalcy again. No guarantee that this pattern will be repeated, but for the sake of the country and for the whole world that it affects, I certainly hope so.
That makes sense. I would also like for the USA to swing back to normalcy. It is scary living in Canada next to a powerful country that is turning to fascism.
I’m sure there will be a next time, but it probably won’t be pretty getting there from here.
The fundamental problem the Republicans have, which is what drives all their anti-democratic policies, is that they’re committed to supporting policies that are unpopular with a large majority of American voters. They’ve been able to acquire power via a system of suppressing certain segments of the vote, and bullshitting other segments into voting for them, but this probably isn’t sustainable. At some point they’ll have pissed off enough people that the people will decide to do something about it.
If that “something about it” can’t be “peacefully voting them out” because the Republicans have gamed the system too much for that to be possible, then it will be something somewhat less peaceful. Maybe it’s a massive general strike to shut down the economy, maybe it’s surrounding every legislature in the country so that it’s impossible for them to work, maybe it’s riots, maybe it’s dragging them all out into the street and lynching them, maybe it’s all-out civil war. But it will be something.
I actually fear the opposite. ISTM that there are significantly more nasty, toxic, stupid and ignorant people than previously (pre-Trump and maybe pre-Tea Party) believed and realized who now know that they can control everything simply by being loud and violent. I fear that there aren’t enough “pissed off” people to undo the GOP.
The Republican Party has a long way to go in the eventual post-Trump era to restore credibility and consistent election success. It needs independent voters, many of whom are currently turned off by anti-science rhetoric and other extreme positions outside traditional policies of less government, lower spending and strong defense. If it depends on a succession of Trump Mini-Me’s to get votes, it’ll keep floundering.
Fortunately for the G.O.P., Democrats have a track record of shooting themselves in the foot and failing to take advantage of changing demographics that are supposed to ensure final victory.
I wouldn’t rule out third parties ultimately becoming more influential in the future.
Nativism goes in waves in American history. This was a theme in the work of Richard Hofstadter, one of the all-time most influential American historians.
The current form of nativism – Trumpism – has lasted a long time, and it isn’t dead yet. I’m worried DJT will win a second term next year. But normalcy within ten years is a reasonable prediction.
I know it’s obvious, but I just had the horrifying realization that there is a generation of people who don’t understand what life was like before the Trump era of American politics.
Sure, there are more than we believed. But if you look at the numbers when polling individual policies, most Americans support the stuff the Democrats want to do. Even among Republican voters, things like abortion and gun control are more popular than the shouting idiots would have you believe. That’s part of why they shout so loud.
Up to now, they’ve “control[led] everything simply by being loud and violent” because the opposition was still trying to work within the system to oppose them. At some point, if the Republicans don’t tack back towards the middle, people will start to realize that the system is broken, and needs to be demolished and rebuilt. And when that happens, we’ll outnumber the deplorable shouters.
Most Americans think most abortions should be legal. Most Republicans in power want to make almost all of them illegal.
Advantage Democrats. And I think that’s by far the most important policy question.
But is the Democratic position that most abortions should be legal, or that all should be?
I’d say it doesn’t much matter, because late-term abortions are rare. But the idea that abortion should, without exception, be up to the woman, isn’t popular.
Then there’s a question I’ve missed in the polling. The question is — do you think that when a woman chooses to have a legal abortion, she is likely making the better choice? To me, that’s not a political question and should have nothing to do with how I vote. But some voters who don’t like abortion might feel that, even though the Republicans go too far, they at least they are sending a message that abortion is morally troubling.
P.S. I But to get a bit back to the thread title: Voters can’t seriously believe that DJT is, in his heart, against abortion. So after Trump, the abortion issue might hurt the Republicans more.
I think that Trumpism won’t survive, but not because the Republican party will somehow embrace truth and ethics.
I just think it’s inherently unstable, given as it is based on a denial of reality and inventing boogiemen like “woke”. It’s propped up right now by the Trump cult and complicit entities like FOX. Both of which are being hit with a dose of reality as we speak.
The GOP will try to keep it going, but it will fail, there will be infighting, and something less Trumpy will be the eventual result.
In peacetime anyway. If there’s some big crisis or, heaven forbid, a civil war, then any level of stupidity can continue indefinitely.
The problem is, sure, they’re denying a lot of reality, but most of that denial doesn’t actually affect them in any real sense, so they can continue it indefinitely. On all the “woke” issues, like trans issues, drag queens, racial equity, you name it, they can just deny the harms they’re causing while making up excuses for why they should be allowed to continue being shitty, because none of that affects them personally.
What will break them is if they’re caught by something they were denying, but which has effects on them and their community that they can’t simply ignore. Alas, such an event will have to be really, really bad, and will negatively impact everyone else as well. I’d had hopes that the COVID pandemic would be such an event, but as we’ve seen, even that wasn’t bad enough to get through to them.
So, something decidedly worse than COVID-19. A new pandemic with a much larger mortality rate? Maybe. An economic collapse so great that we have breadlines in suburbia? Maybe. Some neo-Nazis trying to take over a State government by force of arms? Maybe.