The Presidency of Donald J. Trump, Episode VI: No Witnesses, One Defector, No Checks or Balances

I think the dems have a really strong lineup for 2024 if a dem wins and only does one term or Trump wins a second term. Both Swalwell and Newsom are likely to run in 2024 in that case.

Hate to see grifters getting grifted

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This is mind blowing and really fucking scary.

We gotta remember that no matter how bad things look today, demos are shifting, and fast. Boomers are dying every day and are being replaced with dem friendly demos. By 2024 we could see a purple Texas. Its possible that this was the last hurrah for populism in this country and that the two parties go from populist reps/semi-unified dems to centrist dems/progressive dems.

These party shifts and changes have happened a number of times in our country’s history, and its been 60 years since the last one. It might be time it happens again and Trump is the literal death wheeze of the Boomer generation.

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I really hope you’re right, but I’m not so optimistic.

  • I’ve heard the “purple Texas is coming” for like a decade and a half now.
  • As far as “literal death weeks of the Boomers”, you do realize that 3 of the top 4 Democratic candidates were born in the 1940s, right? Two of them don’t even qualify as Boomers because they’re too old. And the 4th guy is basically a Boomer in a 40 year old body. (To be fair, Bernie is a millennial in an 80 year old body)
  • And I’m not encouraged by stuff like this, where only 57% of millennials favor Trump’s removal from office. Maybe this generation isn’t as liberal as we wish it was.
    https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1208415288716353538
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Big assumption there that you’ll have anything remotely resembling a normal election.

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I get that a lot of you want to believe that 2016 got stolen… but it didn’t. We ran a really bad hardcore establishment candidate into an anti establishment cycle. Establishment candidates are going to underperform badly for the foreseeable future. They’ve utterly lost the faith of the people of this country, largely because they haven’t done anything meaningful for the people since LBJ.

Like I know it’s a tough pill to swallow, but swallow it already. First the voters picked a black dude and then they picked a reality TV show host. The black dude got elected talking about hope and change, and the reality TV show host was literally a hand grenade lobbed at Washington.

They aren’t done lobbing grenades, and they won’t be done until they get something resembling hope for a better future… because the present is pretty fucking dystopian if you aren’t in the top 30-40% of the population, and absolutely nobody feels safe anymore.

A lot of you have been fortunate enough to avoid any real economic insecurity and it shows. Most people haven’t been so lucky.

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That might all be true, but the problem is that someone on the left who fits your prescription of a grenade-lobber will be forever smeared with Commie taunts.

Look at what’s just happened here in Britain.

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https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1209113973246906368?s=19

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So we have to figure out how to help the common people even as they are lobbing grenades. It’s that or WAAF, which to be fair is what a sizable portion of this board thinks…

But let’s be clear we aren’t losing elections to these guys because they are good at working angles to steal elections… those get them 1-2% further along and help them stay barely viable. Their real actions are crazy unpopular. We have to stop trying to figure out how we can keep the donor class happy while conning normal people into voting for us.

Look at how liberals have handled climate change. They want to do carbon taxes or cap and trade laws that pass the costs on to consumers lolol. And then they blame normal people for putting on yellow vests and shutting shit down. Taking money from the rapidly shrinking middle class to fund everything in government is where global liberals are really at, and it isn’t popular… go figure.

The problem in the first world is that the ‘donor class’ (really just anyone rich enough to buy access to our incredibly developed/sophisticated corruption system) isn’t paying their share of anything. In places where taxes are nominally high they evade them, which is easy because they’ve successfully bought off the politicians to defund the law enforcement that would punish them for breaking the law. In the US they defunded the IRS AND got ridiculously favorable tax laws passed. We can’t even get rid of the carried interest loophole.

So don’t talk to me about how the next election is already over because they are going to hack the elections. They didn’t hack the elections in 2016 or 2018. They cheated a bit, but not a crazy amount especially by historical standards (do any of you know how aggressively political parties used to cheat in the past? I do… it was NUTS). The Democrats aren’t winning because they are lying about what they actually represent. They claim to represent unions, african americans, and normal people… but in real life they represent billionaires in wine caves. Those same billionaires give money to both sides and are usually simultaneously funneling huge amounts of cash into dark money groups to help make sure public policy goes their way.

I’m sorry but all the normal people saying the government isn’t looking out for them and can’t be trusted aren’t wrong. It can’t be and it isn’t. Our politicians spend a few hours a day in a call center begging plutocrats for money… that isn’t conducive to them doing anything that helps the common voter.

If anything Donald Trump is a sign of good things to come. I know that’s hard to believe but know that he’s not what they wanted. They would have preferred literally any of his GOP rivals in the primary, and probably HRC in the general. Much more manageable. Instead what they got was chaos and a very probably ‘the emperor has no clothes’ event. He’s busy making the whole thing way way too obvious.

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You can keep spinning this line, but Trump voters have above-average incomes.

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The GOP doing well with people of above average or very far above average incomes is not a news story. Every single poorer person who crosses over and votes for the GOP is a very big deal… particularly given the concentration of them who made the difference in OH/MI/WI/PA.

I mean yes obviously rich assholes vote GOP. That’s their natural constituency… and every single person who makes 500k+ who votes GOP pulls up their average quite a lot… but those voters aren’t enough to get them there. They need some poor, lower middle, and middle class people to come along and finish out with anything approaching a win.

And that doesn’t even come close to describing the impact of the millions and millions of people from those social groups who don’t bother to show up for anyone at all and just tune out because they don’t think it matters. Because for them it absolutely doesn’t.

People from the upper middle+ economic brackets show up to vote nearly always… that’s because they know for a fact that they can get something out of it. The poors are convinced by and large that they won’t because they haven’t. Trump might get a bunch of minorities to show up because he’s being openly racist, but good luck convincing poor whites that it matters who is president right now. They might even like his racism because they would really like to get their first helping of privilege everyone keeps talking about.

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If it all ends up in quasi-totalitarianism run by a hazy mix of government and shadowy multi-nationals it won’t be of much consolation that the former aren’t the GOP.

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This is the political equivalent of victim blaming.

The “bad establishment candidate” earned ~3 million more votes than the thing that “won.” And the 70,000 or so votes that determined the EC was a function of systemic foreign interference, not anti-anything bias.

Riverman has been saying it over and over. The problems are a combination of a flaw in the systems of representation and a side in this fight that has no shame.

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I’m hopeful that he’s made it too obvious and does long term damage to their game plan. He’s a sign of them losing control to some degree for sure.

The EC is not new. This is the second time it’s rat fucked us in <20 years. 40% of the last 5 terms they controlled the WH because of FL/OH basically. The game is the game. Losing to DT is not forgivable sorry.

Sorry, but this narrative is full of shit. Please stop parroting Republican talking points.

Let’s start with the data. According to exit polls, Hillary Clinton won by 12 points among voters making less than $30,000 a year—53% to Trump’s 41% —and by 9 points among people making between $30,000 and $49,999. Trump’s support was the inverse. He won every group making $50,000 or more—albeit by smaller margins.

https://talkpoverty.org/2016/11/16/stop-blaming-low-income-voters-donald-trumps-victory/

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We should have 85-90% of the poor vote. The entire GOP platform is about fucking them as hard as possible without a condom lol.

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Only the left didn’t lose the election. And while it may not be forgiveable but it is understandable. All this hand wringing over finding the right candidate when we’re dealing with a dude that literally can’t put a sentence together, and a party whose policies do not reflect the the wishes of the majority of Americans, crystalizes what the problems really are. And it’s not the candidates.

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If we were serious about beating the GOP we’d start by having the first primary be OH/FL on the same day. We’d also be running on a platform much closer to Andrew Yang’s than Joe Biden’s. There would be as few mentions of abortion and gay rights as physically possible. We could obviously do those when in power… but those issues are pretty much custom designed talking points the plutocrats elevated to split the vote of the lower classes.

Every single time we engage on abortion or gay rights in a big public way we turn off some white people who happen to have problematic views. If we actually wanted to help people, including people who need abortions and equal rights, we’d focus on issues that unite people instead of calling a bunch of white people in OH/MI/WI/PA who used to be reliable blue voters deplorable.

Even how we handle race is idiotic. We should be talking about how badly black people get treated as though it’s happening in a vacuum, not comparing their treatment to how whites get treated. Why? Because messaging. When you frame it how we’ve framed it you make the whites feel like you’re going to take something from them to give to the blacks. Not helpful at all.

Social issues as a whole are lousy politics for the Democrats. It’s a big tent party, which means it needs to pitch ideas that appeal to the whole tent.

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