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

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

…while we’re taking our inspiration from classic works of fiction

xp that’s dogmatically true. The trick is to put yourself in a position to die where you don’t technically kill yourself

that's why they're so mad that biden is gonna ban all the red meat!

For example, “I will take this poisonous snake with the power of the lord!”

Er, tame. But some try to “know” the snake as well

They’re pretty much dying of whiteness anyway.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_Whiteness

I want to white out

The problem is they're killing the rest of us, too

otm

"Dying of Whiteness": Underrated Vampire Weekend Bop

my favorite Carly Rae Jepsen couplet:

white problems
who's got'em?

Dying of Whiteness is a great book, highly recommended.

Looks like Matt Gaetz has a long weekend ahead of him

Breaking: Joel Greenberg, Seminole's disgraced former tax collector, is now set to change his not-guilty plea during a hearing Monday morning. This signals that he has reached a deal with federal prosecutors. Deadline had been Saturday.

Story soon on https://t.co/YW9kPUGr6P

— Jeff Weiner (@JeffWeinerOS) May 13, 2021

and yet, he's still a sitting member of congress. i seriously expected to get back from a recent vacation and find him in jail. but the gop, etc

tbh, i'm surprised they ever found the courage to take away the committee seats from neo-nazi Steve King

I'm really excited to see just what it takes to force him to resign.

imagine going into work and everyone's waving hello at the guy who makes fake IDs so he can sleep with teenagers, and everyone knows it

like, that one thing alone would be enough for me to make a huge fuss and quit my job, if they didn't throw the fucker out IMMEDIATELY. i guess congress is different, because there's over 100+ dudes who are completely corrupt and also actively try to fuck teenagers

tbh I'm guessing that fucking teenagers has long been a bipartisan activity in Congress. (I'm also going to stipulate without googling that there is a Capitol Hill-themed porn movie out there called Bi-Partisan.)

let's not forget what a scumbag Greenberg was too. he was my tax collector at one point, and one year during Trump's admin he was engaging in flame wars on Twitter with people and actually looking up their tax records and using it against him ("maybe you'll pay your registration tax on time next year" or something, he said to one person)

(in addition to what he was already accused of, obv)

Gaetz is on tour right now, and you know what tour is all about, right?

a girl in every high school

it's called the fucking America First tour, it's un-fucking-believable. i believe greene is fundraising off of the fascism tour as well

it's called the fucking America First tour, it's un-fucking-believable. i believe greene is fundraising off of the fascism tour as well

greene sticking it to the libs by touring with a guy who is trying to fuck teenagers

(I'm also going to stipulate without googling that there is a Capitol Hill-themed porn movie out there called Bi-Partisan.)

I did google and it's not Capitol Hill-themed

the Fucking America First tour

this thing is the first time i've learned about private citizens being "tax collectors." it seems like something that would happen in a smaller, older state, like delaware.