US Politics May 2021: Joe Manchin's Choose-Your-Adventure Book

Same reason why the Republican party in Michigan got rid of the GOP canvassing board member who voted to certify the election results.

Okay, it's all more depressing than I thought.

yeah I know there's a lot that needs attention right now but Dems really need to be pushing voting rights 3x harder than normal, who knows how many more chances they'll get

problem is it's very difficult to fight the GOP tactics within the system because of how willfully the GOP like to flout the law. gives you no room for missteps, and at worst you eventually have to become the thing you're fighting against

good morning!

2024 election's gonna be...fucked up. State legislatures will not recognize Democratic votes.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, May 12, 2021 9:51 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This. 2020 is going to look like the 1788 in comparison.

the

i'm not sure what to say. it is bleak. Omar's statement from above is exactly right.

the GOP isn't going to bounce back from this, i don't think. it's the last stage of...something. is it the end of scooby doo when the mask comes off and everything is fine again? i don't think so. this is more like politicians you didn't vote for removing their mask and revealing that they're all reanimated klan wizards from the 1910s. it's frightening, all the more so because of all the tens of millions who love what's happening, are demanding it, even. plus the tens of millions who move along in lockstep.

and yet, i look outside my window and it's a perfect day and the leaves are finally filling out the branches. my own neighborhood and city voted overwhelmingly against trump. the creepy cowboys from my hometown are off doing their (racist) things in that same shitty county.

what happens after this step, in the collapse of US democracy? the openly stated goal of other states (like RUSSIA!!!!!! but you can't say that) was to undermine US confidence in our election system. i don't know how you all feel about things, but i feel like we are there. now. it seems like we are one major fucked up election away from the whole thing snapping. we know, years before the 2022 and 2024 elections, that in the aftermath there will be an uproar from republicans believing their votes were "stolen" in states where they lose, democrats fighting uphill yet again in gerrymandered/jim crow'd states and districts, and a political and legal system too broken identify and fix the problems.

and yet, the sun is shining, i can't really affect anything that's happening, and even when i write to my reps and beg for their help i know that they don't respond. you're lucky if you get put on their email list.

the ancient greeks thought that even 500 people was too many people for a local democracy (at least one in which every citizen could actually participate meaningfully). i don't have a better idea for a political system, uh, but this one is cooked

anyway, ignore that of course, but i do think cheney's ouster is a kind of breaking point, with significance that will be hard to explain to later generations (if anyone still cares at that point). it was shocking on jan 6, before the violence, when GOP politicians were already planning to vote for an attempted coup. then THAT happened, and it was shocking when some of those same GOP politicians STILL voted for it, on the same day! people like mccarthy were briefly doing something close to the right thing, in early January, criticizing what happened. then they all kissed the ring again in mar-a-lago, and now today they've commemorated their downfall with the cheney vote. it will be hard to explain, but this is it. we're done here.

My only hope for 2024 is that Trump's failson gene activates and that he makes a big noise about running (without actually running), but also somehow hates all of the 37 candidates who do run and trip over themselves trying to obtain said endorsement and the whole thing somehow backfires.

somehow

what happens if Trump dies? serious question

My stepmom revealed that she prays for this daily

Cheney is a breaking point because they have now enshrined an explicit willingness to lie about and overturn election results as a condition of party leadership. You can now no longer be in GOP leadership if you are not willing to throw out votes that you don't like. Alfred is otm about 2024, all of the pieces are being put in place here from state voting restrictions to the ongoing radicalization of GOP state legislatures to now the congressional leadership, all with the goal of influencing and if necessary disregarding election outcomes. It will all be under the guise of phony "fraud" accusations, of course, we've already seen how that will go. Except next time it won't be Rudy at the 4 Seasons, it will be a planned strategy executed by competent people.

That doesn't mean it will work — the actual outcome of such a concentrated effort is unpredictable — but it is obviously what is being explicitly prepared for. The sad thing is that the best bet for the survival of our democracy is for a Republican candidate to actually win outright in 2024. They would of course prefer to not have to overturn the results and claim an actual popular mandate. But if they get one, then they'll have even more ability to reshape the landscape for the next time.

So, yeah. It's all pretty grim, because as long as one of our two major parties is just waiting in the wings to institute authoritarian rule as soon as they get the chance, we have kind of limited options. They're going to win eventually. I don't know what happens then.

what happens if Trump dies? serious question

imo, Trump's death would change nothing, except we'd all have to endure the establishment and its media piously pretending that he was simply "controversial", instead of an in coherent, hateful, racist shit stain barely recognizable as human. Republican policies and practices wouldn't budge a millimeter, but the race to be the nation's next most popular racist would intensify.

I assume they'd insist he's not dead.

my hope is trump is on trial (for any number of things) leading into the '22 midterms and as hilarious as that sounds it will be fatally demoralizing for GOP voter turnout. they can't win with MAGA alone

Yeah I think it's a mistake for people to focus too much on Trump at this point. He remains very important, but also if he does die tomorrow this party continues down the path it's already on. It was never just about him. He's already triggered the doomsday machine.

If Trump dies, they’ll return to a more genteel ethnofascism, but it would probably hurt them to a small degree. No one else in the party can front like they’re outside ‘the swamp,’ which will render his previously apolitical cultists apolitical again.

we just need to beat up more conservatives IMO

I feel like the GOP's overt voter suppression can come back to bite 'em. The 2018 midterms showed that when Trump's name isn't on the ballot, the Trump voters don't necessarily show up in droves. And let's face it, some of their voters are pretty old and prefer voting by mail,etc.

As long as white supremacist apocalyptic evangelicals are the largest voting bloc, some form of ‘Trumpism’ is going to be competitive.

also since so many Protestant sects belong to the "you can be a sumbitch and get to Heaven by saying sorry on your deathbed", most of those folk don't exactly care for self-introspection.

I actually remember going to a Methodist church at 11 and being taught that and thinking "wow cool, all I gotta do is figure out when I'm doing and just apologize then"

*dying

more broadly, how do you get people who think they are going to another, more fabulous world with no libs, minorities, or gay people after they die, to give a fuck about improving this world.

The probability that those evangelical voters have minorities, gay, and anti-Trump people among them worth killing.

Xpost -John Lennon, "Imagine"

It was the hope of the demographics are destiny crowd that there would just be fewer of those people but American Catholicism has been infected by American Protestantism and white supremacy is a strong motivator to bring in new adherents.

I do think a different republican candidate would struggle more to sell the stolen election narrative. Part of the reason that Trump was able to get as much mileage as he did was that he believed his own bullshit way more than some of these "smarter" republicans do. You see time and again when they are pressed on these questions they get all mealy-mouthed and stumble, whereas Trump would just lie and bluster full throttle regardless of whether it made sense or not.

Except next time it won't be Rudy at the 4 Seasons, it will be a planned strategy executed by competent people.

maybe...but like, even with Trump out of the picture, it's not like the GOP has their shit together. they have people like Hawley, Crenshaw, MTG, Ted Cruz, etc. who are good at kicking shit up but I don't see how any of them get Trump's following. none of them are going to get the wall-to-wall, WWE-style coverage that Trump got. none of them have the aura of "success" that Trump had. so much of Trump's rise in 2015 was this idiotic "well maybe we SHOULD give someone like that a chance!" talking point. a huge chunk of his appeal was that he was an outsider who wanted to shake up the system. idk if someone whose career began as an elected official can capture that.

also, I know this is gonna sound real condescending, but a lot of Trump's appeal was in the fact that he was a genuine dipshit. he really was as dumb as the people who voted for him. GOP voters can sense when they're being pandered to and guys like Cruz & Hawley come off like debate club geeks. I cannot see the current GOP base getting excited about either of them. even the real dumb ones like MTG are not as good at trolling and that's gonna be a huge part of it as well. there's a certain lack of self-awareness that you're gonna have to have and very few people on the planet possess that. I'd be more worried about like, the Dilbert guy than any of these clowns.

xpost "Demographics are destiny" was the path to keeping Mitt Romney types out of office. Which is why Republicans have abandoned Mitt Romney types. Bare-knuckled white supremacy and evangelical dominionism married to an overt willingness to subvert election outcomes is a new tack.

Also, it doesn't matter all that much how many actual people believe a stolen election narrative, as long as there are enough people in Congress and state legislatures willing to at least pretend to believe it. At the moment there are a lot of them, and they have just made it essentially mandatory.

And maybe this will all blow up in their face, I don't know. What worries me is that they have some big structural advantages that mean they will inevitably win back either Congress or the White House or both, and when they do it will be as this radicalized post-Trump party.

I don't see how voter suppression will blow up in Rs faces unless there is a legislative backlash (Manchin: sorry, no) that survives SC scrutiny (Barret: sorry, no).

another problem for them is that espousing GOP ideology right now as a public figure might get you banned from Twitter and I don't think you're gonna be able to campaign much on the My Pillow guy's site

Fox News and Breitbart will just host them

Trump didn't win on Fox alone, though - CNN had like 3 full-time hires whose only job was to defend him on air. I wanna say they learned their lesson but they continue to employ Rick Santorum so they'll probably do the same thing in 2024

the last time I saw Santorum on CNN, Cuomo was yelling at him for being racist so I don't know how much longer CNN is going to employ him

I dunno, that's probably good political theater. Lefties see it and feel righteous, righties see it and feel martyred, everyone at CNN goes home happy.

Obviously, instead of feeling smug and righteous that Santorum got yelled at on tv because he's racist, we should be yelling at CNN for promoting racist views.

Well, yeah.

maybe...but like, even with Trump out of the picture, it's not like the GOP has their shit together. they have people like Hawley, Crenshaw, MTG, Ted Cruz, etc. who are good at kicking shit up but I don't see how any of them get Trump's following. none of them are going to get the wall-to-wall, WWE-style coverage that Trump got. none of them have the aura of "success" that Trump had. so much of Trump's rise in 2015 was this idiotic "well maybe we SHOULD give someone like that a chance!" talking point. a huge chunk of his appeal was that he was an outsider who wanted to shake up the system. idk if someone whose career began as an elected official can capture that.

see i kinda agree with this. no one else has the traction trump does

more broadly, how do you get people who think they are going to another, more fabulous world *with no libs, minorities, or gay people* after they die, to give a fuck about improving _this_ world.

more broadly, how do you get people who think they are going to another, more fabulous world *with no libs, minorities, or gay people* after they die, to give a fuck about improving _this_ world.

what are they waiting for?

that's what i always ask. 'if this world is terrible, why not die and go to your superheaven'

I'm sure there are some successors of Kevorkian who will help u on yr way

They are actively trying, believe me

They are waiting for an act of god to kill them, or looking for an act of god to walk into

Like a random guy driving steamrollers on suburban streets?

^^^ love that Paul Simon quote

People who kill themselves go to Hell according to most Christian dogma that I know/remember.

We can send those who wish to join the Kingdom of Heaven to an island and we can hunt them win win