rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

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.

especially because they're allies to the police now

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.

in normal times yes but I feel like the "c'mon, no fucking way is he gonna win" factor is a lot smaller this time around

the wild card's gonna be the pandemic/mail-in voting and I think Trump has already laid the groundwork to call all that fraudulent

xxp do you think Trump will believe for a second that he could ever go to jail?

More likely he'll go off on a 'fact-finding mission' to Russia and not come back, living out his days as Putin's court jester. Still hoping he shoots himself in the head in the Oval Office once the jig's fully up - and only succeeds in blasting the lower part of his jaw off, thus being tried while looking like Popeye after a chemical face-lift.

More likely he'll have his own TV network and face zero accountability for anything in his life.

^^^ this

It's the only thing keeping me from thinking he'll stay in office should he lose.

I hope he does try some shit, will only turn more ppl against him

i hope he wins the 2016 primary, because it will be easier to defeat him in the election than ted cruz or kasich

wait, sorry - i flashed back for a second

sad lol

The point of the article isn't that he won't try it, it's that a bunch of fear-mongering is going on as if Trump can merely snap his fingers on Inauguration Day and say FRAUD and boom, he's emperor for life.

It would require a grand conspiracy that neither he nor his disorganized aides, Cabinet, or any of his allies have shown any capability for being able to pull off.

And the problem with this fear-mongering is I'm already seeing people using this as an excuse not to vote - "Well I hate Biden, and Trump is obviously not going to give up the White House even if he loses, so what's the point".

But Trump hasn't shown much in the way of balls when it comes to lawbreaking. Yeah, he's violated some by having his White House counsel come up with crazy interpretations of the law, knowing it will get tied up in court challenges, but even then, they've complied with injunctions against these actions.

And there have been way more instances where he threatened to do illegal things and backed off because he either knew he couldn't and was posturing, or his aides told him he couldn't. He is still an autocratic fascist wannabe that has managed to injure the rule of law, used the Attorney General as his own personal lawyer, destroyed the independence of the Judiciary branch, and other heinous things, but he hasn't managed to pull off a Viktor Orban styled soft autocracy where he has enemy press shut down entirely, has opponents jailed, or has his ruling party pass new laws that make it easier for Fidesz to ever lose control.

Trump is too inept to do those things, and look, maybe his armed redneck base wants to uprise if he l
loses, but look how many of them showed up to protests with inert rocket launchers and wooden guns.

Scary shit might happen, but getting an ulcer worrying about it isn't my jam. We can take to the streets too.

it doesn't require a grand conspiracy. the vox article upthread presents one plausible scenario:

Imagine that it’s November 3, 2020, and Joe Biden has just been declared the winner of the presidential election by all the major networks except for Fox News. It was a close, bitter race, but Biden appears to have won with just over 280 electoral votes.

Because Election Day took place in the middle of a second wave of coronavirus infections, turnout was historically low and a huge number of votes were cast via absentee ballot. While Biden is the presumptive winner, the electoral process was bumpy, with thousands of mail-in votes in closely fought states still waiting to be counted. Trump, naturally, refuses to concede and spends election night tweeting about how “fraudulent” the vote was.

We knew this would be coming; he’s been previewing this kind of response for a while now.

One day goes by, then a few more, and a month later Trump is still contesting the outcome, calling it “rigged” or a “Deep State plot” or whatever. Republicans, for the most part, are falling in line behind Trump. From that point forward, we’re officially in a constitutional crisis.

and there's proud boys walking the streets of chicago with baseball bats, "protecting" the streets, with the chicago police standing right there as willing partners.

my takeaway from knowing all that is possible is just a stronger conviction that we need to absolutely obliterate trump in november so that the actual result of the election can't be disputed in a way that's taken seriously

oooh the proud boys I'm scared

we’re officially in a constitutional crisis.

but think of all the strongly worded letters from democrats we'll be alerted to thanks to cnn and the new york times

While I don't think you need to be scared of them, I think it's legit scary that the CPD is cozying up with them and implicitly supporting their actions.
xpost

Neanderthal otm