Anybody else remember how the only likely Republican candidate for president was Jeb Bush? Right up until about November 2015? It's early days. Trump is getting no younger. He is gaining no new friends. And he has gone from a joke to an existential threat for half of the country. Teddy Roosevelt was a more popular president than Trump. He was objectively better. Yet he couldn't secure the Republican nomination in 1912, and lost as a third party candidate. Yeah, the Republicans don't have anything else going on right now - but that's because they don't have anything else going on. There are definitely Trump die-hards. There will always be Trump die-hards. But theirs is a cult of personality, not of ideology, and that personality is substantially less potent now than it was in 2016. The way Republicans win is by pointing out how different Democrats are, how other, and how much of a threat they are to the Republican way of life. That's harder and harder to do in an environment where the other side doesn't. This is why Biden ended up winning: he doesn't pick fights. The Democrats should have gone for the jugular in 2009. Should have annihilated the banks, gutted their leadership, punished the shit out of corporate malfeasance. Woulda smothered the Tea Party in its cradle. Now? Now the Republicans hold all the buzzwords because the Democrats stand for nothing. I kinda feel that's why they're letting Manchin and Sinema run the table. I dunno. It's all a fucking mess but I've lost faith that shouting past each other will make things better.Trump will run in 2024, and one way or another, he'll destroy any semblance of democracy.
Firstly: That rap is fantastic. I would have produced for that in a heartbeat. Again, this is mostly for posterity, I think it's good to put this content out in the public domain as frequently as possible. Whether Trump runs or not isn't as important as realizing that the GOP has crafted blueprints for achieving minority rule via legal means. We all know they already had advantages in gerrymandering, the nature of the Senate, and the electoral college, but I fully expect at least one GOP-controlled state gov't to say "we actually decided to send our electoral college electors to vote for Trump (or whoever) because fuck off". The laws allowing it are already on the books, in at least Georgia, and I'm sure elsewhere, I can't keep too much track because it's saddddddd. When folks point to Trump's fundraising apparatus as proof that he plans to run again, I don't think that's proof enough. Of course he wants control of the purse, either way. But more than money, he needs validation. Privately, he knows he lost 2020 fair and square. He knows it was only by a sum total of several tens of thousands of votes spread across a few states. He knows that we have a news media that either critiques Biden quasi-fairly, so maybe about half negative, or only affords Biden negative coverage exclusively, so it's gonna be hard for Biden's approval to rebound. He knows to be relatively quiet right now to give himself room to turn up the volume to 11 in 2024. I actually think he can win 2024 legitimately, but that if he doesn't, you should probably expect every state capitol and even a lotta county courthouses to have his dipshits patrolling around with guns, ready to enforce the narrative that "Trump won by show of force, soyboy libtard" or whatever. I think, for him, he has to get back into the white house. It's the biggest megalomaniacal high he's ever had, and he wants it again. SCOTUS repealing Roe? Only 1/3 of the country wants that. Apparently only 1/3 of SCOTUS doesn't want that. I'd tell you that this is another case of the GOP shooting itself in the foot, but the 1/3 of the country in favor of repealing basically all vote, and only about half of the other 2/3 of the country vote. I loved when Fox and the Trump campaign touted how much more "enthusiastic" their voter base was compared to democrat voters. I think "rabidly foaming at the mouth to vote" is pretty enthusiastic, yeah. We thought they wouldn't bother voting if they thought the election was rigged, but now I think they're only more likely to attempt to rig the voting themselves, if they think the dems are doing it, and both at a personal level and institutionally. Ideas on The Establishment Congressional Left currently include: Hand Wringing. Pearl Clutching. Debating whether Boebert should be censured for airing an amazingly racist slur during Gosar's censure hearing. Having an internet literacy of someone one hundred and forty years old. Hoping Merrick Garland isn't scared shitless of prosecuting the leaders of an insurrection attempt. Completely avoiding the use of humor as a rhetorical device to lampoon the buffoonery going on across the aisle. Not ramming through voting rights legislation that is objectively more fair than the current laws while controlling two branches of government. Not actually controlling the legislature. Yeah I dunno how things get better, but I know that either way, things are gonna get a whole lotta worse in the meantime.
Lol you're talking about a group of people (conservatives, not Republicans) that enshrined 3/5ths black people into the constitution, that demanded the Senate, that created poll taxes and Jim Crow laws as if they've just now hit upon voter suppression. What they've done is chosen to do it proudly, something that hasn't worked since George Wallace lost in '68. It's kind of demographically expected - you've got 'boomers whose money is running out and the world they were promised is not the world they got. But they'll die. They're doing a heckuva job at it, really - first the opioid epidemic hit them the hardest. Then they opted out of masks and vaccines. When an entire demographic has grown accustomed to running the world, and then has the world taken from them, they do two things: (1) lash out (2) perish. It doesn't really matter what Trump wants. What matters is what everyone else wants with Trump. So far? Devin Nunes wants with Trump, primarily because demographics are destiny. David Purdue wants with Trump, mostly because he's fucking hopeless otherwise. Matt Gaetz wants with Trump because he's going to need some sort of future and right now he has none. Marjorie Taylor Greene? Lauren Boebert? They don't have anything without Trump, and are purely Trumpian creatures. Sarah Palin managed to become her own thing after losing in 2008 but it only lasted four or so years. She was never able to make it stick. I don't think we have smooth sailing ahead of us. But I also think everyone on the Left is overestimating the staying power of Trump, primarily due to trauma. Yeah he raised a billion dollars with a SPAC or whatever, but I mean fuckin' Rivian raised a hundred billion with an imaginary truck. A billion ain't what it used to be.Whether Trump runs or not isn't as important as realizing that the GOP has crafted blueprints for achieving minority rule via legal means.
To be fair they would have rather had the whole black person, as the point was to get more representation. The non-slave states wanted 0% of slaves to count and slave states wanted 100%, so 60 is where they settled. The whole "conservatives think blacks are 60% of a person" trope is misunderstood. Slave owners of the time thought that blacks, or at least slaves, were 0% of a person for all purposes but getting them more votes in the House, more votes for president, and more share of tax apportionment, for which they wanted the whole person.Lol you're talking about a group of people (conservatives, not Republicans) that enshrined 3/5ths black people into the constitution...