POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[ReluctantSamurai]

The level of detachment from reality is terrifying. There is a clique of people who genuinely think trump is some kind of moral genius who is the only defence we have to communism

What's actually scary is that these people are too stupid to realize that if he gets re-elected, what you're seeing in Portland Oregon (and coming soon to a city near you), will be repeated as long as he can get away with it. Won't hear these morons bitching about a loss of personal freedoms until such tactics involves them. Republicans should also be concerned as this is definitely not the kind of federalism they espouse. But it's not surprising since Fearless Leader admires such people as Putin, Kim Jong-un, and others like them.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

What's actually scary is that these people are too stupid to realize that if he gets re-elected, what you're seeing in Portland Oregon (and coming soon to a city near you), will be repeated as long as he can get away with it. Won't hear these morons bitching about a loss of personal freedoms until such tactics involves them. Republicans should also be concerned as this is definitely not the kind of federalism they espouse. But it's not surprising since Fearless Leader admires such people as Putin, Kim Jong-un, and others like them.

It is not the kind of federalism conservatives such as myself espouse. Max Boot, George Will, P.J. O'Rourke, Jennifer Rubin...conservatives true to their principles have great trouble supporting that yutz.

But make no mistake, Trump has taken the reins of the party and the GOP now embodies -- overtly or tacitly -- has own brand of Demagogic Pseudo-fascism. Trumpers want to kick ass and ignore the names because they have to oppose the people who are really destroying America -- liberal socialists.

The GOP needs to be handed a soup-to-nuts electoral debacle that keeps the party out of power for the better part of a decade. THEN, perhaps they will re-think the "kill the left at all costs" mantra crap that is gutting American conservatism.

[Hooahguy]

I give credit to the Lincoln Project for actually committing to not turning around to oppose Dems after the election if Biden wins:

The group is preparing to vehemently oppose efforts by GOP senators to obstruct and stymie Biden’s agenda, should he win the presidency, Weaver confirmed.
...

But will the Lincoln Project remain committed to concrete expansions of voting rights after Trump is gone? Weaver said yes, noting it will keep advocating for automatic voter registration and a restored Voting Rights Act, and continue fighting efforts to “make it difficult for black people or poor people to vote.”

Even though I love their ads, Ive been wary of the LP. If they actually follow through with this then maybe Ill begin to trust them a bit more. I think having two main parties that operate in good faith is good for America, so if they can rebuild the GOP (or something else) into a party that doesnt want to turn us into a dictatorship, then more power to them.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I give credit to the Lincoln Project for actually committing to not turning around to oppose Dems after the election if Biden wins:

Even though I love their ads, Ive been wary of the LP. If they actually follow through with this then maybe Ill begin to trust them a bit more. I think having two main parties that operate in good faith is good for America, so if they can rebuild the GOP (or something else) into a party that doesnt want to turn us into a dictatorship, then more power to them.

They arn't looking to take back the Republican Party 'after Trump', they have crossed the Rubicon so to speak they can't return. They are looking to bolster a conservative faction within the Democratic Party.

Once Trump is OOO and the Dem coalition is in power they will be running campaign ads targeting moderate and conservatives Dems to push out Progressive agenda. They are still neocons at heart.

[Idaho]

BBC News - Donald Trump suggests delay to 2020 US presidential election

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53597975

So surprised by this development. Really didn't see this coming

So the election (if he loses) will be put down to fraud by the trumpians and conspiraloons.

Get ready US - full scale fascism is on its way, all orchestrated by Putin.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

OF COURSE he wants a delay. He isn't a reader and has the attention span of a gnat apparently, but he can read a poll summary. And they ain't pretty.

But he will not achieve his sought-for delay.

The only delayed election ever was the first one in 1788 (actually 10 Jan 1789). None have since been delayed regardless of natural disaster, pandemic, or wars both foreign and domestic.

He has about 100 days to change the predicted results.


And full fascism will not be coming any time soon. Any actual attempt to impose it will generate a civil war and Trump's cadre, however ardent, would lose.

[drone]

Theory is that Trump brought up delaying the election to distract from 2 pieces of bad news: the report that we had the worst GDP decline (32.9%) over Q2 in history, and that he killed Herman Cain. Trump does this all the time, "bad news coming? say something outrageous!" He floated it to see the reaction, but he would do it if he thought he could get away with it.

[Montmorency]

Tangentially, I have been informed that I should not use the terms "skew" and "bias" interchangeably, as bias is a systematic statistical error whereas skew refers to the mathematical asymmetry of a statistical distribution. A statistical bias might not involve skew, and a statistical skew might not be biased.


Op-ed by former Republican operator:

I spent decades working to elect Republicans, including Mr. Romney and four other presidential candidates, and I am here to bear reluctant witness that Mr. Trump didn’t hijack the Republican Party. He is the logical conclusion of what the party became over the past 50 or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race-baiting, self-deception and anger that now dominate it. Hold Donald Trump up to a mirror and that bulging, scowling orange face is today’s Republican Party.

I saw the warning signs but ignored them and chose to believe what I wanted to believe: The party wasn’t just a white grievance party; there was still a big tent; the others guys were worse. Many of us in the party saw this dark side and told ourselves it was a recessive gene. We were wrong. It turned out to be the dominant gene.

As always, who already knew this 4, 10, 20, 40 years ago? Why weren't they listened to?

Racism is the original sin of the modern Republican Party. While many Republicans today like to mourn the absence of an intellectual voice like William Buckley, it is often overlooked that Mr. Buckley began his career as a racist defending segregation.

In the Richard Nixon White House, Pat Buchanan and Kevin Phillips wrote a re-election campaign memo headed “Dividing the Democrats” in which they outlined what would come to be known as the Southern Strategy. It assumes there is little Republicans can do to attract Black Americans and details a two-pronged strategy: Utilize Black support of Democrats to alienate white voters while trying to decrease that support by sowing dissension within the Democratic Party.

That strategy has worked so well that it was copied by the Russians in their 2016 efforts to help elect Mr. Trump.

In the 2000 George W. Bush campaign, on which I worked, we acknowledged the failures of Republicans to attract significant nonwhite support. When Mr. Bush called himself a “compassionate conservative,” some on the right attacked him, calling it an admission that conservatism had not been compassionate. That was true; it had not been. Many of us believed we could steer the party to that “kinder, gentler” place his father described. We were wrong.

How did this happen? How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy and the national debt in a matter of months? You don’t. The obvious answer is those beliefs weren’t deeply held. What others and I thought were bedrock values turned out to be mere marketing slogans easily replaced. I feel like the guy working for Bernie Madoff who thought they were actually beating the market.

Mr. Trump has served a useful purpose by exposing the deep flaws of a major American political party. Like a heavy truck driven over a bridge on the edge of failure, he has made it impossible to ignore the long-developing fault lines of the Republican Party. A party rooted in decency and values does not embrace the anger that Mr. Trump peddles as patriotism.

This collapse of a major political party as a moral governing force is unlike anything we have seen in modern American politics. The closest parallel is the demise of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, when the dissonance between what the party said it stood for and what citizens actually experienced was so great that it was unsustainable.

Conservatism is always nothing more than an elite legitimating casuistry. It's just that in the America of our lifetimes it shed the semblance of an intellectual core for the plain guttural shriek.

Only fear will motivate the party to change — the cold fear only defeat can bring.

From the comments:

There is nothing so bracing as the foxhole conversion of a Republican who manifests a convenient crisis of conscience.

Sadly, Mr. Stevens’ mea culpa comes just a bit too late, and only after polls have begun to indicate that the nation is turning against Republicans, generally, and some of them specifically. Many of us saw the disturbing trends of party policy long ago, courtesy of clearly visible immorality and selfishness that has long characterized its true raison d’etre. It’s faux fiscal responsibility, bootstrap policies and morality ploy has been nothing more than a long-con, designed to feather its own nest. Many of us saw it long ago. Not, apparently, Mr. Stevens.

It’s more than time for his likes to own up to Republicans’ sorry evolution toward totalitarianism, racism, ultra-nationalism and selfish irresponsibility, not to mention his own part in it. That he waited, however, until the handwriting was on the wall, courtesy of a roused public which has increasingly had enough, should best be viewed as yet another example of too little too late.

The GOP’s self-immolation has been apparent to many of us before Donald Trump expropriated it for his own political purposes. Instead of claiming that “we lost the battle” and hiding behind NYT opinion piece, let’s see whether Mr. Stevens rises to the occasion and demonstrates some true bravery by meaningfully walking his nascent talk. As Donald Trump would say, we’ll just have to wait and see.

I like the photo of Trump embedded in the article.

OF COURSE he wants a delay. He isn't a reader and has the attention span of a gnat apparently, but he can read a poll summary. And they ain't pretty.

But he will not achieve his sought-for delay.

The only delayed election ever was the first one in 1788 (actually 10 Jan 1789). None have since been delayed regardless of natural disaster, pandemic, or wars both foreign and domestic.

He has about 100 days to change the predicted results.


And full fascism will not be coming any time soon. Any actual attempt to impose it will generate a civil war and Trump's cadre, however ardent, would lose.

The military leadership already told him following the Lafayette Square incident during the height of the BLM protests, in so many words, to jog on.

Without the military all Trump has is a few thousand sicherpolizei and the hypothetical ardor of his militias. He's done.

One of Trump's saving graces is that, though he's a fascist, he's too lazy and stupid to actually attempt to suborn the whole bureaucratic apparatus to a long-term agenda, of which he has none other than 'steal whatever I can.' The same applies to his functionaries. The closest he's come is with immigration and border security, but even there he could have accomplished more with some dedication and legal suavity. Everything Trump does is ad hoc and oriented toward short-term satisfaction of personal corruption or his perception of the media cycle. All told, Trump's fascism is therefore defensive (rather than ambitious) and someone without his astonishing medley of personal and mental defects could be much more dangerous in office. I mean come on, what kind of proper fascist utterly bungles a served-up opportunity in the form of a public emergency to consolidate personal control over the central government and central control over daily life? If even Tucker Carlson were switched out for Trump immediately following impeachment, his approval rating would be 52% (though trying to repress civil rights protests would be an inexorable loser for these people).

None of this is to diminish or dismiss the unprecedented damage done by Trump to our institutions and cultures of governance, only to point out that there can be (will be?) even worse with just a little, normal, non-debility at the head.