I could see it becoming the new ‘repeal Obamacare’ pledge, where the Republicans in the House just keep shouting about it each election cycle as a way to get votes.
(No way there are ever going to be 67 votes in the Senate to convict Joe Biden.)
‘Repeal Obamacare’ is a catchy slogan, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the fire of ‘BENNNNNNGHAZZZZEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!’
It will be worse than that. Every party will spend most of their effort turning back the clock and undoing every act and change which the previous administration and majority enacted. Instead of status quo actual, it will be herky jerky left and right swings which make it impossible to predict what the future of legislation/taxes/etc will be year to year.
I imagine our corporate overlords would step in at that point.
Guap
6640
FUCK THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. A bunch of corrupt traitors. Let 'em all hang.
Not Republicans, mind you. Or conservatives. Or libertarians. Or any other individual voter.
Fuck the GOP for what they’ve done to politics. Corruption, bribery, evasion, destruction of integrity. Fuck them.
Just had to get that off my chest. Sorry for the rant.
KevinC
6641
No, most definitely fuck them too.
Guap
6642
I don’t know. I think our system is broken and needs to be repaired. You only have two choices for President, and it’s leading to bad actor taking over America. It’s time to take a good hard look at the system. I have several questions to examine, but perhaps for another thread. Or perhaps right now!
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Why do people want to hold onto power so badly? Why is throwing their integrity out the window so important to them? Why do they seek to win at all costs?
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Does the defacto two party system divide us too much? When you have to break things down into a dichotomy like that it makes picking a candidate an auto-decision for a lot of people. they don’t pick the best candidate that will represent them, they pick the candidate that they find least appalling.
I was listening to an NPR piece today on Republican voters in Iowa. The general thought among them was that they don’t like Trump (they think he is a bad actor), but they REALLY don’t like socialists. And Bernie and Warren aren’t shy about being proud of that label. They aren’t voting for Trump because they like him, they are voting for him because the don’t want socialism in their country.
I don’t see any scenario in which Trump is not re-elected. It’s disheartening. The system seems broken and not only do the GOP not care, they actively game it’s being broken, supporting this clown in office.
jpinard
6643
I’ve been wondering the same thing. Most of the Congress people are set for life anyways, so why the need to sell their souls and swim in the gutter?
To go back to your question, this by a better writer than I summarizes why the process the impending acquittal has taken leaves me in greater despair than one might expect, knowing the result was a forgone conclusion:
https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2020/01/31/dershowitz-matters-unfortunately/
Just make sure you don’t touch their Social Security, Medicare or federal farm subsidies.
The democratic socialists need to do a better job of branding and educating. (and I say that as someone who has referred to myself as a socialist since the Reagan administration)
Well, people on the right prefer fascism to socialism is hardly front page news, is it?
This actually shows how the whole thing is manufactured spin. First of all, Warren is not proud of the socialist label, she specifically calls herself a capitalist and says her goal is to save capitalism. The problem she has run into is that a) that sounds impure to the left wing of the party and b) what she says doesn’t matter to potential Trump voters because the right wing propaganda machine has labeled all attempts to tax the wealthy and use the government to improve people’s lives as socialism.
The problem, of course, is that it is hard to tell the difference between someone who honestly believes that socialism is too scary and it would be better to have a corrupt authoritarian than a socialist, and someone who is actually voting for Trump because they like how he pumps up their pride with his racism and sexism so they grasp at whatever straw the media throws them to justify it.
The whole purpose of the insane arguments from Trump’s defense team is to simply forcefully say things that can be sound bites later for the Senators who are going to acquit him. If Dersh says that anything Trump does to get re-elected is in the public interest and therefore not corrupt, Senators acquitting him can say, “Well of course there are things that would be off limits, but a phone call isn’t one of them.” If the lawyers say that Biden was corrupt and it is within the powers of the Presidency to investigate corruption, Senators can say, “Well, he should have had the DoJ investigate this legitimate issue, but he’s a bumbling oaf so he asked the Ukraine. It’s no big deal, just your lovable uncle Don who isn’t quite up to speed on the minutiae of Washington’s complexities.” They ignore all context, the media repeats their words, and no one challenges it with actual facts or logic.
Like when Alexander says that Congress doesn’t have the power to overturn the will of the people from the last election and those words are simply reported verbatim. The proper way to report that is to say, “Lamar Alexander falsely claimed that removing the president from office for bribery isn’t a power granted to Congress by the Constitution. It is, in fact, one of the things explicitly listed in the Constitution.” Or when he says that barring Trump from the ballot in November for “one little phone call” isn’t what the framers intended, the story should focus on how wrong that is, not on what he said. I mean, everything about that is wrong, so where do you start? Barring Trump from the ballot is explicitly listed as something they can do. Bribery and abuse of office for personal gain are explicitly listed as reasons to do it. What Trump did involved far more than “one little phone call”. And, even if you get past all those things and still think that Trump should be allowed to run in Nov, they could remove him from office to prevent further abuse that taints the election, but allow him to run. They aren’t doing that, which means that any claim that this is about fairness and letting the people decide is bullshit.
Guap
6648
This is scary and I fear poignant.
Why do they do it? Also @Guap…
Ex-SWoo
6650
This is purely anecdotal, but I’ve done a few roadtrips up through upstate NY & Mass the past month and have noticed a massive decrease in MAGA- type signage outside compared to just a year ago. It definitely feels like some level of Trump fatigue has set in, even from Republican areas of the state.
If nothing else I’m counting on lower voter turnouts from Republicans this time around.
To counter that, I saw at least three TRUMP 2020 hats on the expected white dudes at the local Farmer’s Market over the weekend. Let’s wait til closer to the election to see if there’s any actual fatigue from these people. It might just be they haven’t gotten their signs yet.
I saw a guy at the grocery store yesterday wearing a Trump 2020 hoodie and a MAGA hat. He looked like death warmed over, like 60-70, obese, patchy gray hair, eyes that were half dead. Like a dude who just goes home and sits in front of the TV and waits to die, getting angry at happy people with productive lives in the meantime.
That dude is going to vote.
Yeah, you probably don’t buy a Trump 2020 hoodie and then neglect to vote.
SlyFrog
6654
I mean, this is kind of asking why Central and South American drug lords don’t step away. They have millions or billions of dollars. Why keep putting your life at risk, when you could just disappear to some island somewhere with your millions and billions?
It’s human nature to love power, to love control, to love having more (even when more is ridiculous, because you have everything).
You will never have a point in time, as greedy and base as humans are, where there won’t be a lot of people who will do whatever they can to get/keep more, regardless of what they already have.
Guap
6655
I have ambitions to change the world, but not to have power for power’s sake. That’s the sign of a very weak and selfish mind to me (I know, I know, it’s self evident… just observing).
