Why Hitler “succeeded” and Trump has already failed

Politics & Elections
201

One more thing to add that won’t impress many here, but I think could end up being really meaningful:

For the first time that I’ve seen – and I’m following this stuff closely on Substack – Trump’s approval rating has finally dipped below 40% in a major poll.

It had been seeming like there was this hard bottom of ~41%. No matter what the Trump administration or the President himself did, his approval rating would only drop so low. I’ll be interested to see if some more glass floors in other polls corroborate Gallup’s results.

202

Interesting, thanks for that!

Yeah, now would seem to be the time for that approval to dip, even as the lug nuts explode off the rims, lol.

203

Now it’s time to strike while the iron is white hot! Chuck Schumer is going to send a really strongly worded letter to the White House and lead a chorus of Queen’s “We Are The Champions” on the Capital steps! Hopefully he doesn’t forget the lyrics halfway through and start singing “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”.

Stranger

204

Something like that. :slight_smile:

205

The greater the number of polls in a series, the higher the chance of an extreme outlier. So without Trump’s underlying approval changing, I’d expect to see a new record low every few months.

Unfortunately, I do not see Trump 47’s rolling poll average currently being at a record low:

But it is still early in this administration, with plenty of chances for Trump’s underlying approval to go down. I’d think a Christmas toy shortage, and toy inflation, could hurt DJT’s popularity a lot more than any personal scandal. Voters already know Trump’s sexual morality is low. What they do not know yet is how much harm he will actually do to the economy.

206

The situation continue to change fairly rapidly, though not, IMO, in a direction that is good for Trump or nascent American fascism.

His health, both mental and physical, are cratering. Question: If your grandparent or parent looked and spoke (including cognitive aspects) as Trump does and manifested the level of change in such appearance and speech that Trump has since, say, the 2024 election, would you be concerned? IOW, there is both the absolute aspect (Trump looks and sounds like shit and shows signs of cognitive decline) and the relative aspect (he seems significantly worse overall than he did in November 2024). Consider also that your sick loved one would not have access to the best doctors in the world 24/7 and others who can patch him/her up and make him presentable. I.e., if Trump looks that bad after the primping, what would he look like otherwise?

I am specifically asking you to think of a loved one to establish a standard, since there are those here who blow off all questioning of Trump’s health with, The dude is evil and is gonna live forever, and thinking anything else is wishful thinking. I mean, Trump literally looks worse than my mother a couple of days before she died last year. Now it’s true that people can die without looking bad, and people can look terrible and not die. But it’s also true that the sitting president of the United States should not–absolutely not–look that bad! Frankly, while I don’t know if he is on the verge of death–old people with very poor health can still live for years–I do think he is on the verge of being unable to hold the office, regardless of how much they try to prop him up.

As part of this decline, Trump is flailing and going more apeshit than usual. Any inhibitions or limits that existed are crumbling in real time. Meanwhile, Trump regime sycophants and the GOP as a whole are, per usual, doing absolutely nothing. This situation can give the appearance that Trump is doing more and getting away with more. And in a sense, he is. But it also increases the chance that Trump will soon, owing to his loss of control, slip into cataclysmic overreach that can’t be patched up politically.

I know, I know: the frog has been boiling in the bucket. Trump keeps getting away with more and more. It’s not by any means a great situation, and if Trump were younger and in good health, I would be much more worried than I am now. Why? Because he’d have the energy and control to keep pushing and needling and demoralizing the country year after year, and it might just work to break the will of the country and destroy the rule of law. But such a strategy would require control and a very deliberate and careful execution of the necessary steps. Even then, fascist victory would be far from assured, and it could trigger a schism (states breaking from the federal government but not formally seceding, which seems rather close anyway to happening right now) or an outright revolution.

But Trump is losing his grip. To me the question comes down to this: Will he go fully over the edge before he dies or becomes incapacitated? We could get the answer any day now.

207

Yeah, I think it’s more likely that he’ll start wobbling around wearing his underwear on his head before he kicks the bucket. Let’s see, tomorrow’s Thursday…that works for me!

208

The R Party hitched their wagon to the Felon because he was able to bull-rush his way past everyone. Most of the rest of the Rs are a tiny bit iffy on the idea of autocracy and would rather try to get their agenda advanced (or more accurately, retrogressed) in a way that looks less extreme, but Felon-ONE is moving things in the direction they mostly want, so they back him.
       The Party is terrified of him, as though their careening wagon is being pulled by an uncontrollable horse, but they desperately need him because no one else can pull it like he does. Hence, they will go to any lengths to keep him alive and in power.
       J Dönitz Vance can do pretty good stupid, but he will not be anywhere near as effective as the Felon has been. He might get some of the agenda pushed through, but he lacks the major MAGA support and the pure bovine-stupid personality to keep up the momentum.

209

The term ‘illegal immigrant’ can be taken in different ways. The cult has a stereotype that all immigrants are illegal. Many in the immigrant community resent others who have cut the line. el donald appealed to both groups but, his recent actions seem to be alienating the immigrant community. Those ICE raids are spooking a lot of people.
The two groups live in different parts of the country. The cult lives in the small towns where everybody is white. Immigrants live in the larger cities. They don’t interact or compare notes.

210

Indeed, we can hope!

211

I created this during trump 1.0, but it’s even more appropriate now.

Trump is definitely losing it–he does something outrageous and or illegal every day or several times a day now. Paul Krugman described the situation well in yesterday’s Substack. We know exactly how he feels!

I do three things every morning: I start a pot of coffee, I feed the cat, and then I fire up my laptop. The first two are calming routines. The third is a moment of high anxiety, because I’m about to see the latest developments in The Crazy.

No, I haven’t developed a Trumpian habit of Random Capitalizations. “The Crazy” is my personal term for the escalating barrage of destructive actions and statements coming from the madman-in-chief and his minions. During Trump’s first term we got a couple of these each month. Now they come multiple times a week, sometimes several times in a single day.

At this point The Crazy is running at such a rapid pace that hugely important stories all too often get buried because some other terrible thing pops up and demands immediate attention.
…

212

There’s no cabinet, no advisors, no brain trust like past presidencies. There’s a writers room he walks into each morning, shouting “how do we keep them tuned into the show today?”

213

Correction: the cult has a stereotype that all non-whites are “illegals”; right down to the Native Americans who were here first. It doesn’t actually have anything to do with immigration or immigration law, it’s all about racism.

214

No @Ancient_Nerd (good to have you with us on the Dope, by the way!) has things quite correct for some electorally key blocs of the Trump cult.

There are plenty of Latinos who are not racist towards other Latinos who nevertheless believe that since they came to the U.S. legally (or were later legitimized, e.g. by the Reagan amnesty), that anyone who arrives without authorization should be deported, simply as a rule-of-law matter. Since Donald Trump doesn’t speak coherently on this matter*, many of them came to believe that he was with them on the question. Some of that group can be found in posts over in the Leopards-Eating-Faces thread.

* Is it Donald Trump’s political superpower that he can spew the most inane rantings on whatever subject and have every person in his audience, no matter how widely divergent their views may be from each other, believe he agrees with them? Have to think about that…

215

I agree with what you say!

I like the pun; may JD’s upcoming reign be as short as that of the Flensburg Government.

And you’re right that Trump’s “charisma,” whatever you want to call it, is based on what is opposite to rational thought, arguments, etc. Trump is an expert in presenting things to the mean-dumb people, and he always includes a presentation of himself. Vance, in contrast, is overly cerebral and verbal. As the “I’ve Had It” women say, he’s a smoky-eyed sociopath who lacks the rizz to contain and control the Deplorables. I think they’ll tear him apart, like sharks that smell blood and weakness in the water, sooner and more eagerly than we Liberals ever could.

Speaking of I’ve Had It, the first thing they talk about in this video is Trump talking about Seth Meyers’ contract with NBC and how he intends to talk to them about its renewal. Sure, the POTUS should absolutely spend his time like this at 1:56 in the morning. Now Trump’s been insane like that forever, but what’s different is his feeling (because he never thinks) that he can meddle in absolutely everything, since he controls everything. This is a new zone of delusion for him, and I think it’s directly attributable to his cognitive decline. Here’s the video:

216

Yes, Trump and his goons have a piecemeal approach in which they piss off everyone they can while not increasing their own control of things. As I said way upstream, Hitler chose a very small victim class (the Jews) to bully and oppress while actually trying to get the rest of Germany on board. Trump and his nazis, in contrast, are purposely antagonizing a majority of the country.

217

Actually, a lot of the protest I’ve seen has been in rural areas, from communities having long-term farmworkers arrested.

There a lot of immigrants in the larger cities. But there are a lot of immigrants outside them, also.

218

It was not really “chose”. The was a widespread perception at the time that the WtEAW was fought on behalf of “the bankers”, and we all know who run banks.

219

Well, yes, and Hitler didn’t invent antisemitism. He just took it to its ultimately evil conclusion.

220

So… the health thing is not looking good for Dear Leader. Six days out of the eternal spotlight of the sunless mind must have been hard for him. I’m sure you’ve seen the dissembling “proofs of life” as well.

Going to have to start a thread on the soon-to-be-experienced-and-enjoyed Vance Regime…