rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

honestly I think the majority of the Republican party will start saying "Donald who??" the moment he loses the election but I may be wrong

Oh we’ll remind them.

Again and again for the rest of their lives.

WE WERE JOKING!

no doubt, many republicans, maybe even the majority, will do that. there will be the marco rubios and the john thunes and other complete bastards who will pay lip service to moving toward a new republican party, there will even be a few trump-alumni like nikki haley who people can gravitate to. mitt romney will be around. kasich might get some air-time again.

but if even 20% of their base takes the trump/8chan path, semi-permanently, the GOP could be in big trouble. especially if - here comes my wild prediction - trump ends up being a precursor to someone that is similar, but actually smart and competent. a competent troll fascist who has a sense of humor would be a very popular politician. i feel like there's a whole room of incredibly dumb people waiting to be scooped up

Trump's motivation for trying to hold on to the office after a clear loss would probably be the Presidential immunity from legal peril he thinks the Supreme Court will provide him (although he may be more unsure about that after recent days). On the other hand, I remember last year when he couldn't even win a standoff w Pelosi about what day to give the SOTU address.

I still stand by my assertion from years ago that a candidate who is in every way similar to Trump but who hasn't been a ubiquitous pop cultural reference point for decades wouldn't get within spitting distance of the WH.

but if even 20% of their base takes the trump/8chan path, semi-permanently, the GOP could be in big trouble. especially if - here comes my wild prediction - trump ends up being a precursor to someone that is similar, but actually smart and competent. a competent troll fascist who has a sense of humor would be a very popular politician. i feel like there's a whole room of incredibly dumb people waiting to be scooped up

that's the future I see for the usa

I'd worry about the same thing if there seemed to be someone waiting in the wings. I can see a guy like Dan Crenshaw maybe taking on that role but people fucking hate that guy right now. Trump's stupidity and shamelessness is part of his appeal.

Turning point USA has been grooming the next generation of charismatic fascists

true but none of them have the generational wealth/celebrity/foreign connections that Trump has

I do agree that if it were to happen it would probably be someone who isn't currently a politician

Tucker Carlson in 2024 seems more and more likely

tucker carlson would have been a great fit for the CRT, square aspect ratio era. his giant square unmoving fascist head was made for CRT, but he just missed his time

see, doesn't this seem right?

https://i.imgur.com/nXhNpu6.jpg

Here's the thing:

People keep conjuring up the "smart, charismatic fascist" that's gonna be "Trump, but competent" and sweep in and institute a thousand-year Republican Reich, but here's why that's not gonna happen:

1) There aren't any smart, charismatic fascists. Name some names. Tom Cotton? Dan Crenshaw? Jim Jordan? Fuuuuuck all those worthless turds. If you're far enough to the right to win the Republican nomination, you're by definition a stupid, obnoxious asshole that 60% of the viewing public is gonna see right through and be repulsed by.

2) There aren't enough white people to go for this bullshit anymore. Democrats are winning the demographic war, and Trump poisoned the well with a lot of white people but good. Political journalists (and posters on this board) seem to think voters have the memories of goldfish, but I don't think so. A lesson has been taught day by day over the last three and a half years. Now, does that mean Bernie has a chance? Fuck, no. But it means that the Democratic party has a real opportunity to move closer to Warren, AOC, Omar, et al. than fucking Schumer, and that's something.

WE WERE JOKING!

"The Aristocrats!"

People keep conjuring up the "smart, charismatic fascist" that's gonna be "Trump, but competent" and sweep in and institute a thousand-year Republican Reich

haven't read the rest yet, but this conjurer would like to point out that i don't think it means republicans (or the third party fascist spin-off party) is going to win. it makes it less likely.

Agreed. I think that the extremely-online stochastic bloc formed by the trollish, violently-disposed, conspiracy-minded, fearful agitators, and radicalized-in-any-direction is one whose influence has not been appropriately accounted. I think that undervaluing this shaggy mass it is to the peril of centrist and left-of-center politics, viz. the 'reasonable' establishment Democratic Party. Now and ... for the future.

This is to say that, while there are loons of every stripe and color that comprise the online-weirdos bin, looniness by definition arcs toward extremism and radical rhetoric. The zero-sum tropes ('culture war!' erasing history') and binary thinking embodied (at the moment) by 45's re-election campaign are more appealing to this group than any market-tested campaigns mounted by a stodgy DNC and a stodgy ol' candidate. This is why 'Sleepy Joe' works so well as an insult to a certain segment. As long as Biden's staid and uninteresting and un-meme-able, his support doesn't quicken the pulse of the extremely-online bloc. The left end of the online folks stays docile and boring, and the right-end dominates.

This isn't to say that Biden's campaign needs to start using terrible rhetoric, hate-speech, conspiracy ... but it does need to grapple with the fact that the extremely-online folks have more options, more organizing, more community, more forums, more presence on the right than the left. The danger of this, to me, seems to be that when the general election results trickle in and they're *not* conclusive or consistent or part of an expected narrative, there's a constituency who're primed to explode. And nobody's gassing up the tank and mounting for uncle Joe.

(I hope I'm wrong).

This is why 'Sleepy Joe' works so well as an insult to a certain segment.

But...it...doesn't. The whole reason Trump has been flailing around for a new insult for Biden is that his go-to isn't working.

As long as Biden's staid and uninteresting and un-meme-able, his support doesn't quicken the pulse of the extremely-online bloc.

Do they need to be excited about Biden, though? They seem to have a lot on their minds already.

The left end of the online folks stays docile and boring, and the right-end dominates.

Uh, have you looked out in the street recently?

This isn't to say that Biden's campaign needs to start using terrible rhetoric, hate-speech, conspiracy ... but it does need to grapple with the fact that the extremely-online folks have more options, more organizing, more community, more forums, more presence on the right than the left.

No. No, they don't. And even if that were true, their influence is limited to online. BLM marches etc. are fucking massive, filling city blocks day after day, meanwhile the Proud Boys can muster two dozen assholes to a bar, if they're lucky. Both sides are organizing online, but only one side really has the numbers when things move into the streets. (Unless you count the police as de facto right-wing shock troops...which they kind of are, but only as tools of local/state power. They're not lining up for Trump.)

police unions sure have lined up for trump

Thank you for tearing my post apart point by point, I am sorry I dared to post in a thread with somebody of your intellect.

also i think it's a mistake to correlate BLM with "democrats" and proud boys with "GOP", although obviously they represent edges of both parties.

in general though, just to repeat what i said upthread, i'm not saying we're doomed for a continuing era of GOP fascism. i'm saying that it seems likely that the GOP will split into more explicitly fascist and whatever the 2020 version fo "compassionate conservatism" looks like, and that will be bad for them (electorally) and bad for the country (in having a semi-permanent fascist party)

Having far-right politicians in head of state as an emerging trend around the globe is also not helping matters

my dad hates trump but likes dan crenshaw. I wind this worrisome but not quite worth full blown fretting about yet

I think the advantage, if we're actually talking about this, is to the so-called GOP moderates, like Mitt or Kasich, who suddenly seem downright liberal compared to Trump. In Mitt's case, that might hurt him, because Trump supporters have been trained to hate him. But someone like Kasich, if anything he has a little more wiggle room to go farther to the right (if needed) and still be appealing to enough middle of the road Republicans.

this isn’t in response to you km—I know it’s not your implication—but you just reminded me I’m increasingly seeing this construction GOP:MAGA::DEMS:BLM forwarded in news and opinion pieces and finding it really maddening

dan crenshaw literally looks like a GI Joe villain I don't see him gaining traction with the general public

a lot of the appeal of Trump is that he's entertaining, he's a showman, none of the right wing guys mentioned are entertaining

imagine people lining up at a basketball arena to hear....Tucker Carlson speak.

Sadly I can imagine that.

an eyepatch despot does seem like the next logical phase

probably still a good decade out from hairless cat accessory

it seems likely that the GOP will split into more explicitly fascist and whatever the 2020 version of "compassionate conservatism" looks like

Trump's approval rating among Republicans hovered near 90% for his first 3 years in office. It is only during the current catastrophe that it has dipped closer to 80% approval. Whatever one might say about self-identified GOP adherents, the 'Bush wing' of the party has nowhere else to go and has mostly chosen fascism as more palatable than any form of, say, national health care and the Green New Deal.

I don't know if I can deal with having to think about Tucker Carlson every single day.

I remember reading on ILE about "this is the end of the Republican Party" in 2008. And in 2012...

my dad hates trump but likes dan crenshaw. I wind this worrisome but not quite worth full blown fretting about yet

― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.), Monday, July 6, 2020 9:41 AM (fifty-four minutes ago)

is your dad also canadian? also who the fuck is dan crenshaw

Dan Crenshaw is a gi joe supervillain

Ben and Marshall still more famous.

https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/vEuZJy2M7tfRwOIDhUKJSPVLuJk=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(95)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/1935996da25ceaf4f85cb22a6b963406/crenshaw-davidson-snl-20181110.jpeg

I just looked it up and Tucker Carlson is the highest rated cable news show and the highest rated with 18-54

which still means only 660ish thousand people under the age of 54 watch his show in a country of 320M people

Yeah, "highest rated cable news host" is some real "tallest dwarf" stuff.

it seems likely that the GOP will split

Why tho?

They appear to know that their path to power is still to ride the MAGAwave, no matter how distasteful they find (or found) the trumpster himself. That's why yr Graham, Rubio, Cruz, Collins, Murkowski types will only pronounce themselves "concerned" about uncouth tweets while still doing everything the MAGAnauts want. They will not withhold votes.

Actual renegades from Trumposity - Evan McMullin, Mitt - have no sway on the direction of the national party and they know it. Personally I don't see that changing even after His Orangeness is out of office. They may withhold votes but they don't command a lot of them anyways.

Or am I misunderstanding you, KM?

Frankly I see as much, or more, energy for fractures in the Democratic coalition. See Tracer above. If the economic left, Bernard Brethren, BLM, police abolitionists, and whatever Morbz is ALREADY preemptively feel betrayed by DNC centrism, imagine how betrayed they'll feel a short ways into a Biden administration that delivers basically nothing for their priorities. At least some of these discontents can, and will, withhold their votes.

Feel like at least a few stalwarts have gotta be looking askance at the long-term GOP project after a few of these recent SC decisions.

The Democratic leadership has an erection of hardened steel at the prospect of capturing the Mitt Republicans. In no way can this be read as a boon for progressive or liberal causes. Gonna be a lot of kente cloth events hoping you don’t notice that Black Americans have less wealth than 1980.

2) There aren't enough white people to go for this bullshit anymore.

― but also fuck you (unperson)

yep. i mean, to me this is the argument of the people who won't vote for trump because he's "vulgar". they're envisioning this mass of people, people who are a lot like them, who wouldn't vote for trump but who totally would have voted for reagan, given the opportunity. (we all know trump did better with white people than reagan did, right?)

that's what people are afraid of, right? we went through this apocalypse before. the republican party melted down in 1974 over watergate and everybody pretended like it was just some weird aberration and six years later reagan swept into office on a white horse.

this ain't 1974. worry about the ghost of reagan or the ghost of stalin or the ghost of whoever, but i got my hands full with people who aren't dead.

the only path forward for the republicans is the one that got them to the point where they are now: voter suppression and disenfranchisement. i expect that they'll keep along that general path, and i expect that the liberals will keep not calling them on their bullshit and conceding rigged elections to them "for the good of the country".

It’s a fantasy to assume that more white people can’t become fascists or fascist-adjacent in a time of greater strife or that the GOP can’t do some kind of realignment on their targets to bring Latino voters back to George W levels.

Gen X has become markedly more conservative as its household wealth has increased, this will continue, and eventually will be true of millennials as well.

I just looked it up and Tucker Carlson is the highest rated cable news show and the highest rated with 18-54

which still means only 660ish thousand people under the age of 54 watch his show in a country of 320M people

not sure how the stats with this work, but this was from a few days ago:

"Tucker Carlson Tonight" finished the quarter as the highest-rated program in cable news history, tallying an average of 4.33 million viewers. "Hannity" was a close second, with 4.31 million, followed by three other Fox programs: "The Five," with 3.9 million; "Special Report with Bret Baier," with 3.66 million; and "The Ingraham Angle" with Laura Ingraham, with 3.62 million.

i'm not sure of the age breakdown of the 4.33M viewers. most of them elderly, probably. but i'd guess that more than 660K are under the age of 54.

Thats still lower than viewing figures for some leftist youtube channels (never mind right wing channels). Not to say thread of Tucker isn't real, but cable news viewing figures need to be put in some sort of content

context!

threat!