More of an issue with halfwits opposed to the GOP agenda is their proclivity to glom on to the Jill Steins, Ralph Naders, et al that split loyalties and rob votes from what should be a unified effort to defeat the GOP. I understand wanting to push the nominee leftward during the campaign. But before the voting starts why in the hell 2nd and 3rd tier candidates donāt ask their supporters to vote for the only person in position to defeat the Republican nominee is baffling.
The head of the Teamsters promised that Jimmy Hoffa would always be a cornerstone of the organization.
What, is Michele Bachmann back in the news?
Chiselinā Trump, at a July 25th, 2017 rally: āWith the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president thatās ever held this office.ā
I would like to see Trump run in 2020 on a treadmill at the Federal Prison Camp, Yankton in South Dakota. Heāll feel better if he drops a few pounds, eats better, exercises regularly, and sleeps through the night. I understand they offer classes in accounting, business administration, and business management too. They probably allow conjugal visits for inmates with good behavior.
My money is still on āgone by October.ā Not saying Iāll be surprised if heās still in in November. Just that I wonāt be if he isnāt.
Me too also.
I still think heāll resign. The Steele dossier doesnāt just have evidence of collusion and Trump working for the Russians in an intelligence sense, it has evidence of his illegal financial dealings with Russia, too.
I will contribute to help Trump āfeel the Bern!ā.
If they are heading for a civil war, itās not too early to start making statues and other memorabilia!
Any bids for a Mitch McConnell lawn jockey?
Whatever crimes heās committed and ineptitudes he displays there are powerful institutional forces slow to move and resistant to ousting a President. Barring an indictable felony from Muellerās camp I say he finishes his term.
I agree with you, but I think after another year or two, Trumpās mental collapseāwhatever itās natureāwill be much more advanced and obvious.
And yet the Republicans will be āThatās just Trump being Bartlettā.
Trump has such a massive ego he recoils at the prospect of being tagged a failure. If he goes itāll be either forced on him or because he keels over and dies. The derision arising from a resignation would be more than he could bear.
O I love that idea.
Right.
So what he does is run away and declare victory. He does it all the time.
Iāll settle for him causing McConnell to keel over and die, which doesnāt seem entirely out of the questionāthat vigorous pallor of his might be concealing some unlikely clot of fatal possibilities, ready to burst if he gets under enough pressure.
Turtles live seemingly forever.
I agree thatās a major problem too. Not sure itās more of a problem though. Iām pretty sure the number of potentially Dem-leaning eligible voters who didnāt bother to vote for Hillary in 2016 is many times higher than the number of 2016 Jill Stein voters.
To put it another way, if every single Jill Stein voter in the key electoral states had voted for Hillary, she might have won the VERY narrowly (Iām not actually sure whether she would have or not, but as I recall the numbers would have been very close at best), but thatās not a very realistic scenario.
Like the Trumpian half-wits, there seem to be plenty of Stein voters who still think they did the right thing, despite all the evidence thatās already piled up. So even if theoretically a change of heart on the part of a large percentage of Stein voters would certainly help the Dems in 2020, it seems pretty clear that we canāt count on that happening to any large degree.
Still important to message in that direction, but IMHO mostly in hopes of preventing more voters from going in that direction, and not so much in hopes of actually mining a significant number of votes from 2016 Stein voters. If they havenāt taken the obvious lesson on their own, and werenāt even willing to listen to Bernie before the election or since, Iām not sure any amount of messaging will make a difference with these folks.
Compared to 2016 Stein voters, potentially Dem-leaning non-voters and infrequent voters are a much larger group. Getting them to take the step of actually casting a ballot in 2018 and 2020 is a huge challenge too, of course. But it would take only a fraction of them to turn the tide against the GOP in 2018 and against Trump in 2020, especially if he fails to expand on his 2016 base of voters (which is how itās looking so far). The subset of voters who turned out for Obama, but not for Hillary, seems like the low-hanging fruit, as they have at least demonstrated a willingness to vote in some cases. But the rest, while not especially fertile ground, might still yield at least some kind of crop given the proper fertilization and watering.
So leaving aside which group ā Stein voters or nonvoters / infrequent voters ā is the bigger āproblem,ā Iād argue that the bigger āopportunityā certainly seems to be with non-voters / infrequent voters. Getting them to the polls is still a horribly tough nut to crack for sure. But with an excellent candidate and a clear message, should be crackable.
My money is on a mental collapse so profound that canāt be covered up. Particularly now that his most fulsome and pathological supporters are dropping away one by one and the number of people whose power depends on him staying begins to be counterbalanced by people whoāll be hailed as heros for expediting his departure.
It was obvious to me as far back as last summer that win or lose, a mental breakdown of some kind, whether ānervous exhaustionā or some kind of descent into paranoid megalomaniacal psychosis or both was inevitable. Between the fragility of his ego, his inability to govern his own compulsions, and his towering ignorance and ineptitude, it is inevitable. Bannon and Spicey would have conspired to hide it for as long as possible. But I donāt think Glower and Gorka and Conaway have either the competence or the heft to pull it off without them.
In a two-party system, you are voting for a party, through its candidate, not vice versa. First you get the party in, then you try to shift its agenda and platform. Republicans get this.
Democrats donāt. I, and many others, campaigned for Bernie, then voted for Hillary in the general.
Many closet racists and misogynists went on to say āboth parties are the sameā and voted for Trump or a third party. The Democratic base is fleeting and too self-absorbed, As for āIndependentsā, most are Republican, just too chickenshit to admit it.