rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

Yeah. At least. Not only that, these are Republicans who went out during a pandemic, etc., to expressly *not* vote for Trump in a GOP primary.

Yeah I'm glad individuals are changing their views, tbc, I'm just skeptical that there are enough of them to the point that "something is happening." BC I've been hearing that claim since pre-November 2016, and it never seems to materialize into anything meaningful. But I am ready to be pleasantly surprised.

His party lost 40 house seats

xpost don't wanna build too much of a lead too early, then Trump will fake his death, and re-enter the race under a pseudonym

His party lost 40 house seats

Oh good milo’s here

so? 40 house pickup was the largest gains made since 1974 in the House and the third-biggest gain by any party in the last 40 years. I wish the 63 in 2010 didn't always get trotted out like it's the only benchmark of solid gains.

largest *Democratic* gains

one of the reasons why the dems took the house in 2018 is that many voters changed their mind about Trump, is all I'm saying. whether they were regretful trump voters, or non-voters in 2016.

yeah, it was a statement

8% of Trump voters went Democrat in 2018 (of the people who voted), according to this exit poll. It's not nothing.

https://www.cnn.com/election/2018/exit-polls

I cannot imagine many voters who changed their minds about Trump sufficiently to vote against Republicans in 2018 will have changed their minds back again to a favorable view based on his subsequent performance in office.

I wish the 63 in 2010 didn't always get trotted out like it's the only benchmark of solid gains.

I didn’t trot it out as any kind of benchmark. It was in response to the idea about drawing conclusions about the Presidential election from a disastrous first midterm. Bill Clinton beat Dole’s ass and Obama whipped Romney’s.

And this is a guy who “won” by like, what, under 50,000 votes combined, across a few swing states?

Exactly. In 2019 you could maybe make the case “he really hasn’t been that bad”, that is if you’re a white dude with a 401k who thinks “climate change is all part of a natural pattern”. I don’t see how you make that argument now. Who does he gain in 2020 that he didn’t have in 2016? Even the fucking Evangelicals are turning against him.

It was in response to the idea about drawing conclusions about the Presidential election from a disastrous first midterm. Bill Clinton beat Dole’s ass and Obama whipped Romney’s.

Well yeah, anything could happen in November

We have five months of COVID, civil unrest, a greater depression and a senile gaffe machine running in opposition. Two weeks ago people were crowing about Biden's lead with senior citizens because of the pandemic... how do those senior citizens feel about tens of thousands of young people of color marching in the streets? No chance that drives them back into the loving arms of the reactionaries.

Drawing lessons from the past, up to and including last week, or making any guesses about the future, including tomorrow, seems foolhardy at this point.

Don't get me wrong, I think he stands a good chance of losing from our current vantage point - I mean, tanking economy, pandemic, nationwide police-protestor clashes. The Democrats have also managed to put up an exceptionally mediocre candidate though, and I also just feel like I've heard it all before about why people who supported trump will finally turn on him.

Not to mention - just like in 2016 - there's always tons of people who will support him without publicly saying so.

and on that day, june 3, 2020, the very last guess about the future was made

there is nothing wrong with guessing about the future, and it's pointless to pretend that people won't do it. the more important thing, i think, is to think about the future with a degree of humility that reflects how uncertain it is

the important thing is to edit your posts retroactively to make it look like u were right all along

We should be worried and sad all the time though because the future might suck and then what do we do? At least if we’re worried and sad we can say “I told you so!” to our neighbors, who we suspect voted for Trump

and they definitely did, fucking neighbors

We can be worried and sad for everything all the time that's happening today AND in the future, come on now.

neighbor to the left has a Confederate/"don't tread on me" mashup flag and neighbor to the right is a Hell's Angel...I suspect they're voting for Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.

the future might suck

might

Say what you want about eating beef bile cheesecake on camera for lols but dude’s got 16 million subs

In Indiana's open primary, with about 72% of the vote in, Bill Weld, who dropped out of the presidential race 6 months ago, has gotten 7.8% of the Republican vote.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, June 2, 2020 10:43 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Weld also got 9% in Nebraska a few weeks ago.

In private polling conducted by Mr. Trump’s campaign, the president is now well behind Mr. Biden, according to people briefed on the most recent round of results. Multiple public surveys this week have found Mr. Trump trailing Mr. Biden, the former vice president, by double-digit margins, including a Monmouth University poll published on Wednesday that showed Mr. Biden ahead by 11 percentage points....

....But Mr. Trump’s belligerent response to protests after the killing of George Floyd, a black man, while in the custody of white police officers in Minneapolis, appears to have worsened his political position even further, officials in both parties said. On an almost daily basis, he has issued a combination of wild threats and complaints about news media coverage and other personal grievances.

“There is no obvious strategy in terms of message,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist based in California. “The president defaults to base messages regardless of strategy, thus the campaign becomes a base-driven campaign.”

Signs of anxiety inside the Trump team are evident across the electoral map. Over the past few weeks, the president’s operation has spent about $1.7 million on advertising in just three states he carried in 2016 — Ohio, Iowa and Arizona — that it had hoped would not be competitive at all this year. Much of that sum went to a concentrated two-week barrage in Ohio, according to the media-tracking firm Advertising Analytics.

The spending in Ohio startled many Republicans, given that four years ago Mr. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton there by eight percentage points.

Perhaps just as telling were two trips last month to Georgia by Vice President Mike Pence. The state has become a source of nagging concern to Republicans, both because of the stakes in the presidential race and because there are two Senate seats up for election this year, including one held by a highly unpopular appointee, Senator Kelly Loeffler, who has been snared in a personal financial scandal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/us/politics/trump-campaign-virus-protests-polls.html

^ Disrespectful to the purview of this thraed imo, why u step on our doomsaying

trump is gonna win...2nd place

https://d146tiw5d2a33m.cloudfront.net/product_images/6853GOM.jpg?width=328&height=297

Perhaps just as telling were two trips last month to Georgia by Vice President Mike Pence. The state has become a source of nagging concern to Republicans, both because of the stakes in the presidential race and because there are two Senate seats up for election this year, including one held by a highly unpopular appointee, Senator Kelly Loeffler, who has been snared in a personal financial scandal.

I'm cautiously optimistic Georgia goes blue in November. But I'm sure the governor will close 90% of the polling places before that happens.

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2020/6/3/21257133/trump-2020-election-meltdown-lawrence-douglas?

the NYT ran a similar story a couple weeks ago

Would really be a fitting end to 2020

A fitting end to 2020 would be Trump losing, millions of Trump supporters coming out to protest, then that asteroid finally hitting the Earth, but somehow killing only the Trump supporters.

that nightmare scenario is the one that's been haunting me all year, but i've been trying to pipe it down so as to not be annoying. but in the context of the current moment, when it seems like biden is starting to gain a real advantage over trump, i'd like to offer a slightly hopeful scenario, where the apocalypse is averted:

if enough people recognize the idea of trump refusing to recognize the results of the election as a real threat, it would be a very good thing for democrats across the country during the election, at all levels. normally, when one candidate is perceived as being well ahead of the other, i think there's usually a point where some people don't bother to vote just because they know it's not close. it's always a shame, because there is much more at stake than just the top line on the ballot. in this case though, there is a very clear incentive to everyone to make the margin as wide as possible, because it's better to trounce him by 20% than it is to trounce him by 10%, or 5%, or 0.8%.

this extra incentive for everyone to vote should always be there, because we already have to deal with voter suppression and gerrymandering. but those issues aren't as well known. trump being a chaotic insane racist asshole, however is very known, and if his plans to endlessly litigate the election results can be publicized well enough, you can add that to the list. who wouldn't love to see him lose by a record margin? there's an extra incentive to "dominate" him that is very uncommon

xp

not being clear or concise enough, sorry. one way to counteract a fascist's plan to dispute election results is to make his loss so very clear that his argument is ridiculous on its face. also, if he goes for ultimate treason and he ends up somehow "winning" the election via the electoral college again, it will be much easier to get the masses of pitchforks going if it is very clear that no, he actually lost for real and HE's cheating (the self-fulfillment of his projections on others, as always)

so concise, oops

(xpost) Has this been posted anywhere?

http://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/trump-election-refusal-leave.html

^ The gist of that article is that Trump could not refuse to leave office without either failing immediately and soon afterward being prosecuted for his failed effort to subvert the constitution, or else sparking off a civil war as his base slavishly follows him into treason and rebellion. What it does not do is argue effectively that he won't try it (e.g. 'he'll be advised not to try it!') or that some large fraction of his followers won't initiate an armed conflict. It does argue effectively that all this would be madness.

I have no real worry he'll refuse to leave, but I think it's inevitable if he loses that he will cast doubt on the results and foment anger among his followers. I think Biden et al would be wise to have a plan in place for that, too.

xp aimless

exactly. it's like the related argument that "he's just doing this all for show, to save face", which is supposed to imply that he'll give it up eventually and go away. but he has does many things, just for show, and continued to do them long after it had passed completely into the realm of the absurd

ha xxp exactly—the concern isn't that he'll "get away with it." It's that he'll amost certainly call the results fraudulent/invalid, potentially stirring his base to violence, leaving us at a minimum with 4 years of people refusing to acknowlege the transfer of power and breaking laws on that basis

it's not the transfer of power that's in jeopardy, it's "peacful transition"

"foment anger among his followers"

"potentially stirring his base to violence"

Yeah they're already there

the proud boys are ready for a disputed election, that's for fucking sure. it's terrifying

especially because they're allies to the police now (at least in chicago)

I would hope that the strength of the one argument--he can't do this, he'd go to jail--would preclude him seriously attempting anything; forced to choose between jail or his former life + a few million acolytes, he'd opt for the latter. He'll make lots of threats, though, for sure.