“That Republican Party, frankly, no longer exists.”
September 9, 2024 11:01 AM   Subscribe

 


Oh fuck I am so tired.
posted by whatevernot at 11:16 AM on September 9 [24 favorites]


Someday, about 20-odd years in the future, there are going to be some fascinating books about this time in our history.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:22 AM on September 9 [23 favorites]


Someday, about 20-odd years in the future, there are going to be some fascinating books about this time in our history.

or no books at all

[remember to vote!]
posted by chavenet at 11:25 AM on September 9 [109 favorites]


I've noticed that CNN now often shows polling as "Democrats" vs. "Trump" (rather the "Republicans" or "GOP") in their onscreen graphics.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:28 AM on September 9 [5 favorites]


I've noticed that CNN now often shows polling as "Democrats" vs. "Trump" (rather the "Republicans" or "GOP") in their onscreen graphics.

This illustrates an interesting media dynamic: OTOH, they're not wrong, Democrats happily embrace the GOP and collude with them as much as they can, their animosity is directed solely at Trump. But really I think that's accidental accuracy on the part of CNN, b/c this seems to me to be the opening salvo of the corporate media doing everything they can do distance and separate Trump's impending potentially catastrophic failure from the rest of the GOP, which of course they want to prop up with false legitimacy in any way they can.
posted by Pedantzilla at 11:35 AM on September 9 [13 favorites]


If you don’t want to get reelected,” Graham once told me, “you’re in the wrong business.”

The fact that our political system rewards people by giving them money and power goes a long way towards explaining why other GOP politicians keep rolling over to kiss his ass. What it does not explain, is why 48% of the electorate wants to see him back in office.

COVID will just go away.
Tax breaks for the rich.
Infrastructure week.

We've all seen his record in office. How can anyone want more of that?
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:36 AM on September 9 [15 favorites]


Alas, looks like the archive.is version cuts off a few paragraphs into the article.
posted by rednikki at 11:37 AM on September 9 [4 favorites]


We know why anyone wants more of that. Because a lot of people are basically shitty.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:38 AM on September 9 [13 favorites]


If there is still a GOP left, hasn't this been their selfish plan all along?

1. Wait for Democrats to stop Trump, preferably by use of some perceived executive or judicial overreach.
2. ?????
3. Return to power on a campaign platform of avenging what the Democrats did to Trump.

The irony is, Trump beat them to step 3.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:45 AM on September 9 [7 favorites]


There was another Atlantic article called 'Republicans' 2024 Magical Thinking'?
posted by Selena777 at 11:54 AM on September 9


"Trump has a keen eye for finding soft targets: pushovers he can bully..."

Reading this, I realized something: Trump has bulled and rolled over many members of the Republican party, but he seems to have toughened up the Democrats as well, in a way that they have not been for a very long time.
posted by rednikki at 11:54 AM on September 9 [18 favorites]


Trump Ally’s Embarrassing Speech Is a Sign of Campaign’s Dismal State
“I’m here to tell you, don’t lose hope. On a personal note, I can tell you that I am as hopeful as ever,” Guilfoyle said at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida. “Because Americans from all walks of life have had enough of the Democrats’ decline. And we are ready, we are willing, and we are able to spark a new era of American exceptionalism.”

But that tagline didn’t elicit any reaction from the muted crowd.

“You can clap for that,” Guilfoyle added, tossing her head to the side.
"Please heil."
posted by kirkaracha at 12:05 PM on September 9 [23 favorites]


The fact that our political system rewards people by giving them money and power goes a long way towards explaining why other GOP politicians keep rolling over to kiss his ass. What it does not explain, is why 48% of the electorate wants to see him back in office.

Because that self-same system is rigidly, ritually bipolar, and electability is ALL when identity matters more than policy.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:09 PM on September 9 [1 favorite]


...but he seems to have toughened up the Democrats as well, in a way that they have not been for a very long time.

Well, if they're not indestructible by the time the election rolls around, we're fucked.
posted by BlueHorse at 12:45 PM on September 9 [4 favorites]


I've noticed that CNN now often shows polling as "Democrats" vs. "Trump" (rather the "Republicans" or "GOP") in their onscreen graphics.

I think they should keep that up. This election really isn't about Democrats versus Republicans, or the Left Wing versus the Right Wing. It's about Americans versus Traitors. If you support Trump, you support someone who wants to shred the constitution and become a dictator. You support mass deportations. You support ending medical autonomy and privacy. He can't be permitted back into power, even if that means stepping over ones own party, or ones own ego, and that seems to have sunk in for enough Republicans that treating this as a simple "Dems vs GOP" election is a little disingenuous.

Trump has pulled his supporters and the party so far past the lunatic fringe, that those left behind find themselves in a Big Tent that's big enough to cover almost the entirety of the traditional mainstream American political spectrum.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 12:48 PM on September 9 [6 favorites]


“Why are you so afraid of saying what you really feel about Trump?” I asked [Raffensperger].

Maybe - and I'm just spitballin' here - it's the "relentless death threats" against his wife and family?
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:52 PM on September 9 [17 favorites]




“Why are you so afraid of saying what you really feel about Trump?” I asked [Raffensperger].

The same reason the Arlington National Cemetery staffer didn't persue criminal charges against the staffers who pushed her.

Trump's essentially won. No one wants to hold any trials, and even when he has a trial and is guilty, oops we can't sentence him because he's a special boy. If folks think the day after the election it gets better, well.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 1:14 PM on September 9 [14 favorites]


> Alas, looks like the archive.is version cuts off a few paragraphs into the article.

It looks like the Internet Archive has a full copy.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:20 PM on September 9 [6 favorites]


If folks think the day after the election it gets better, well.

You don't feel like he will be sentenced if he doesn't win?
posted by Selena777 at 1:21 PM on September 9 [1 favorite]


You don't feel like he will be sentenced if he doesn't win?

I feel like we'll bee too busy in lawsuit after lawsuit, running up the SCOTUS, for any of that to be important.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 1:24 PM on September 9 [6 favorites]


> CheeseDigestsAll: "What it does not explain, is why 48% of the electorate wants to see him back in office."

The Occam's Razor explanation is that 48% of the electorate wants to see him back in office because they agree with his stated aims. They want him to do the things that he's promising to do.
posted by mhum at 1:29 PM on September 9 [12 favorites]


This election really isn't about Democrats versus Republicans, or the Left Wing versus the Right Wing. It's about Americans versus Traitors. If you support Trump, you support someone who wants to shred the constitution and become a dictator. You support mass deportations. You support ending medical autonomy and privacy.

If one is a politically-engaged, well-informed and left-leaning person, this is Truth, and Trump Must Be Defeated At All Costs. Likewise, someone equally engaged but from the right side of the spectrum likely believes that To Save America, Democrats Must Be Defeated At All Costs.

The Occam's Razor explanation is that 48% of the electorate wants to see him back in office because they agree with his stated aims. They want him to do the things that he's promising to do.

Jesus, folks. Occam's Razor points to the system. Power is all, it's the Hatfields vs the McCoys, and if you believe that the GOP must prevail over the Democrats, then you will hold your nose (or you will embrace the stink and Proclaim It Smelleth Fyne) and vote Trump.

Which is not to say that Trump isn't Awful and hasn't brought alot of fresh Awful along with him. Just understand how the system lets this sort of populist climb to the top.
posted by Artful Codger at 1:46 PM on September 9 [4 favorites]


We've all seen his record in office. How can anyone want more of that?

Racism.

The answer is racists voting for racism.

People want this to be complicated but it’s not.
posted by mhoye at 2:10 PM on September 9 [47 favorites]


Yeah. How can one possibly be an "undecided voter" these days?

The choices are pretty fucking clear here. There's not a lot of nuance going on.

And I have seen all the other posts that talk about how people are too busy trying to survive though capitalism to pay attention to politics. But, ugh. Propaganda versus the people who might help you? Blows my mind. Those are not low-information voters, those are no-information voters, who can be riled up by the right's angry bs.

And how do we reach those people? If they are no-information people, how do we reach them. Or do we just go after the larger numbers of "low-information" voters?

Math and statistics and population sizes are cool

Here's hoping Harris gets him to waste his time rambling about sharks or some shit, or even trying to explain a policy thing he would put forward...

I so hope it is a bloodbath.

EDIT: (Figurative)
posted by Windopaene at 2:29 PM on September 9 [4 favorites]


From people I see on Facebook, it’s not so much low-information as different and poorly-assessed information. For example, I saw a bunch of people sharing stuff about fast food costing 2x as much as 2019 (true). They have kids and jobs. They pick up fast food. In their minds, Biden was in charge during that and the huge inflation, therefore it’s his fault. That is an incredibly hard narrative to counter without a bunch of wonkiness. You think people know what the Fed is? Ha!
posted by caviar2d2 at 2:57 PM on September 9 [10 favorites]


caviar2d2: that really illustrates the problem, too, because it’s so highly subjective - if you’re, say, the kind of person who tries to eat healthier or shops at Costco (where inflation hasn’t even been the 25% CPI average) your lived experience is so different that you probably haven’t even looked into why fast-food prices soared up.
posted by adamsc at 3:30 PM on September 9 [2 favorites]


We've all seen his record in office. How can anyone want more of that?

I figured out a few years ago that way too much of America is basically an angry mob from South Park or The Simpsons. I always thought those scenes were really over the top satire, and, I'd guess, so did the people who were writing them. But no, 40-something percent of the electorate truly is as silly-ass as this lot.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:34 PM on September 9 [9 favorites]


>You think people know what the Fed is? Ha!

The Fed didn't even cause this inflation, either.

it's cost of revenue is the same as 2021 but it upped prices 10% and saw a $1.5B increase in profits, such that $10 on every $25 purchase is MCD pre-tax profit.

I don't really see any connect to the big bad "Fed" here. Corporations decided they could blame 'inflation' and proceeded to do so.
posted by torokunai at 4:17 PM on September 9 [12 favorites]


The Occam's Razor explanation is that 48% of the electorate wants to see him back in office because they agree with his stated aims.

While that may be so, it's seems too simple. According to Pew Research, the number one issue for Trump supporters is the economy. To me, that implies people who are looking backwards, not forward. They're paying more for milk and bread (and housing) and they don't like it. They simply equate the past with Trump.

But they aren't looking at the bigger picture, that food prices were a) triggered by COVID and b) under near monopolistic control. Similarly, housing costs are based on a decades-old lack of supply and rent prices are influenced by software collusion.

"I want everything to be cheap and easy," might be overly simple as well, but I'd be more inclined to bet people want that over "retribution."
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:48 PM on September 9 [5 favorites]


As someone who’s doing a couple of phone bank shifts a week, undecided voters do exist. This thing is gonna be decided by well under 100k voters smeared across 4-5 states, so we celebrate every one we reach.

I talked to a 20 year old last weekwho “registered on a whim”. Coaching him through googling project 2025 and starting to read up on it made the whole shift worth it.
posted by FallibleHuman at 4:55 PM on September 9 [37 favorites]


This isn't a real mystery. You know how when people would bring up all the problems with Biden they'd shout, "Vote blue no matter who!!! A vote for a third party is a vote for Trump!!!" etc. Well, it's just the same thing. People who are smart enough to understand that Trump is a strongman, a demagogue, a cult leader, a Negan without the jokes, well, they all tried. It didn't work. And now they're voting red no matter who.

Now, why do people who love Trump love Trump? That's a different story. But these people don't love Trump, they just love winning. And they can't wait for him to stroke out on the toilet some fine day.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:14 PM on September 9 [7 favorites]


Read the article and then read the Wikipedia article on Der Sturmer, specifically the list of absurd crimes Jews were accused of, and tell me if you see any difference in the ridiculousness of the claims being made.

Any difference at all.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:18 PM on September 9 [7 favorites]


Pedantzilla: this seems to me to be the opening salvo of the corporate media doing everything they can do distance and separate Trump's impending potentially catastrophic failure from the rest of the GOP

Which polls are you reading?
posted by tzikeh at 7:04 PM on September 9 [1 favorite]


Trump supporters. I think there are four basic groups:

1. true believers (aka easily duped for whatever reason, suckers in the con; not necessarily racist, Trump has more than a few supporters who are not pale of skin tone)

2. grifters (ie: they don't fall for Trump's BS, they're just in on the grift, see a Trump presidency as a way to monetize and prosper -- again, not necessarily racist)

3. racists, nazis, bigots -- whatever you want to call them

4. conservative types (again not necessarily racist) who only really care about their pocketbooks and Republicans are always good for their pocketbooks (or so they have long believed), doesn't matter who the actual candidate is.
posted by philip-random at 9:33 PM on September 9 [1 favorite]


Trump's essentially won.

Glib defeatism like this just helps Trump. Please don't fall for it.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:59 PM on September 9 [21 favorites]


I'd add a 5th type - those who either hate women, or are prepared to kill women to enforce their beliefs about forced births countrywide.

WRT to the various court cases, I don't see him even seeing a day in prison if he loses due to the current Supreme Court. E.g. making him literally immune to most prosecution (which of course wouldn't apply to anyone else because Reasons). Cannon using Thomas' specially crafted concurrence to decide to ignore prior Supreme Court rulings that the Justice dept can't appoint special prosecutors etc.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:21 AM on September 10 [5 favorites]


>> We've all seen his record in office. How can anyone want more of that?

> Racism.

> The answer is racists voting for racism.

> People want this to be complicated but it’s not.


This.

All I can add to is that some things are more important than money. For some people, that something is patriarchy and white supremacy. That's why they vote for awful people against their own economic interests.

It's all perfectly rational.
posted by AlSweigart at 5:48 AM on September 10 [3 favorites]


FALSE: Haitian immigrants are trying to eat people's pets.

TRUE: Police shoot people's dogs on a regular basis.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:00 AM on September 10 [13 favorites]


> Trump supporters. I think there are four basic groups:

1. true believers (aka easily duped for whatever reason, suckers in the con; not necessarily racist, Trump has more than a few supporters who are not pale of skin tone)

2. grifters (ie: they don't fall for Trump's BS, they're just in on the grift, see a Trump presidency as a way to monetize and prosper -- again, not necessarily racist)

3. racists, nazis, bigots -- whatever you want to call them

4. conservative types (again not necessarily racist) who only really care about their pocketbooks and Republicans are always good for their pocketbooks (or so they have long believed), doesn't matter who the actual candidate is.
Your characterization is quite similar to a Cato Institute (!!) report. Your '2. grifters' are labeled 'Free Marketeers' in the report, and '4. conservative types' more or less correspond to 'Staunch Conservatives' in a self-explanatory way. Your 3rd group, 'the bigots', roughly matches the 'American Preservationists' who are the most racist subgroup of Trump supporters.

The 'true believers' in your categorization sort of match the 'Anti-Elites', 'the least likely group to [...] be politically informed', as described in the full report. Finally, the Cato report notes a small number of 'the Disengaged' which I think can be lumped into the 'less politically informed' group.

[BTW I noticed the Cato report via this interesting essay: Is Donald Trump a Modern-Day Catiline? (spoiler: sort of, but more significant is the parallel between an America in crisis and the Roman Republic prior to its disintegration)]
posted by runcifex at 7:55 AM on September 10 [10 favorites]


I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers, and Methodists!
Hedley Lamarr
posted by kirkaracha at 9:49 AM on September 10 [8 favorites]


But these people don't love Trump, they just love winning. And they can't wait for him to stroke out on the toilet some fine day.

I'd prefer anyone who supports DJT to be disappointed in every way possible. Perhaps he will succumb while on tour and speaking. I doubt his followers would recognize his stroke gibberish from his normal BS. I don't wish his death, however, should he be cognizant, unable to speak, drooling, and incontinent while bedbound, that would begin, in a small amount, to do penance for the evil he's done in his lifetime. Of course, he'll have to rot in hell for eternity to atone for the rest, but whatever.

Meanwhile, get out and vote. It's our last chance to salvage anything left of this country.
posted by BlueHorse at 1:59 PM on September 10 [2 favorites]


Trump Spox Gives Stunning Response About Attacking Kamala Harris As ‘Dumb’
BOLDUAN: Right, and that’s what Nikki Haley is saying. You agree that it doesn’t help Donald Trump when she calls him — when he calls her dumb?

ALVAREZ: I think it’s important to call a spade a spade.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:24 PM on September 10 [1 favorite]


How can one possibly be an "undecided voter" these days?

Some are following the coverage, waiting to see who is most likely to win so as to be on the winning side and feel like they also won…and feel that they are smart (because they picked the winner).
posted by brachiopod at 3:35 PM on September 10 [2 favorites]


My father is in his 80s and is often the sole progressive in his friends group. He's a veteran, and after Trump's recent disgraceful behavior at Arlington, he wrote to one of his MAGA veteran friends "soldier to soldier, doesn’t this disgust you?"

The friend wrote back "he's a disgusting, un- American moron, but as long as he's running, I'm voting for him. " Forget Fifth Avenue, dude could shoot the unknown soldier in Arlington and his true believers won't budge.

Please phone bank and reach out to those unregistered voters Falliblehuman mentions above. We can win this but we've got to work and can't give up hope.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:45 PM on September 10 [4 favorites]


The Apprentice, a movie about Trump and mentor Roy Cohn, almost failed to get a distribution deal.
posted by Brian B. at 4:06 PM on September 10


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