Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

RE: taking Trhump off ballots, imo it's worthwhile to try. When it goes up to Supreme Court they'll have to rule on what they think the 14th Amendment actually says/means. It's the same thing the GOP is consistently doing, from gun rights and abortion rights to baking a gay wedding cake. They litigate the shit out of everything, it's only fair that we do likewise.

xp what was the cult before trump? did it come out of nowhere?

what was the cult before trump? did it come out of nowhere?

It came out of the Tea Party, the Birther shitheads, and the vast swath of people who spend hours of every day mainlining FOX News and other right wing media, brainwashed by Limbaugh and Roger Ailes.

xp It was the Tea Party, I think.

xp lots of crossover in that Venn diagram.

In 2015 and 2016 he animated a group of non-voters and so-called independents -- many of whom had voted for Obama in 2008 -- to become Republicans.

That's the difference that made the difference imo.

It's significant, if largely irrelevant at this point, that Trump launched his political career riding the "birther" canard. That was a pure expression of white reaction to a black president.

something i wanted to ask, then: if trump is politically obsolete, already, then (going back to what i was attempting to address in my post) what are your views on taking him off the ballot in some states? does it make any difference? (i have more baloney to say but want to make sure i understand what you're saying first)

guess it depends on the state, it won't matter for CO but isn't Maine the state which does all four electoral votes individually? so it could matter there. ultimately I don't think it'll actually happen, obviously Trump will fight tooth and nail for it and the deck is largely stacked in his favor. but I do think the fact that there's gonna be a huge argument about whether or not he's Constitutionally eligible to run is not exactly where you wanna be once the campaign actually starts.

xps i thought there'd be more nixonland heads in this thread!

my view is that the current trump cult is the latest variation on a long line of conservative cults with roots in white evangelical alliances with the far right in the 50s and 60s (at least).

and my point in bringing that up is that the cult will continue on after trump is gone

Nixonland is a key text. Having just read Doppelganger, I'd say that and Nixonland together capture our moment all too well.

I am not sure we've ever seen a cult of personality in the U.S. quite like Trump's. I can't even compare Reagan's following. But I think the comparison to evangelicals is otm.

if trump is politically obsolete, already, then (going back to what i was attempting to address in my post) what are your views on taking him off the ballot in some states?

I think he should be removed from the ballot in all 50 states. He should be ineligible to run for president — or, indeed, for any public office. And you can't make that decision based on what his most insane cultists might think, say, or do about it. You have to make the decision based on whether it's the right decision. And legally (and morally, for whatever that's worth) it is. Will Republicans attempt to get every Democratic candidate thrown off future ballots for specious reasons? Of course. But again, you can't take that as your guide and therefore do nothing. You have to do the right thing anyway.

what makes the Trump cult so different is it has this aspect of reality TV to it, like I believe it's ushered in this new era of Republicans whose previous life goal was to be on something like The Bachelorette. through Trump they've found another way in. I keep thinking of MTG and how the people who knew her before she ran for Congress said she wasn't anything like this when they knew her, in fact they wouldn't have even guessed she was conservative. you see that all over Congressional Republicans now. lost in this weird battle for Speaker was the fact that the GOP-led house has passed essentially nothing since winning it back in 2022. Jim Jordan hasn't passed a bill, he hasn't even sponsored one. they're not even using trans panic and "the war on woke" or whatever to accomplish their goals, that in fact is their goal, to get on TV and loudly scream "WHATS HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY?"

(obviously there are a group of more sinister, goal-oriented Republicans who have glomped onto this movement to actually do evil shit, but I think the core of Trumpland is still something else)

guess it depends on the state, it won't matter for CO but isn't Maine the state which does all four electoral votes individually? so it could matter there. ultimately I don't think it'll actually happen, obviously Trump will fight tooth and nail for it and the deck is largely stacked in his favor. but I do think the fact that there's gonna be a huge argument about whether or not he's Constitutionally eligible to run is not exactly where you wanna be once the campaign actually starts.

i agree with the thought that the only states that would move to take him off the ballot are blue states, so it doesn't matter electorally. but i think the direct electoral effect is maybe the least important thing about the whole issue. more important (i think) is what that looks like to a typical gop voter. i think, to many people, and especially with the entire gop spin machine flooding the zone with shit, and the quality of civic education in the united states being _abysmal_ for several generations now, it comes across as "the democrats tried to cheat in the blue states".

people don't like losers, and it's true that trump has been losing a lot*, but i think they dislike cheaters even more than losers

I think he should be removed from the ballot in all 50 states. He should be ineligible to run for president — or, indeed, for any public office. And you can't make that decision based on what his most insane cultists might think, say, or do about it. You have to make the decision based on whether it's the right decision. And legally (and morally, for whatever that's worth) it is. Will Republicans attempt to get every Democratic candidate thrown off future ballots for specious reasons? Of course. But again, you can't take that as your guide and therefore do nothing. You have to do the right thing anyway.

unperson i think this is a totally legit view, maybe even what i ultimately believe ("you have to do the right thing anyway.")
i worry about the people who might bear the physical cost of doing the right thing, though

frogbs otm. I think the other aspect of this to keep in mind is that the entire project of the modern Republican Party is to continue to benefit the very wealthiest in the U.S. to the greatest extent possible. This culture war shit is just a smokescreen. However, I do think that the people who actually run the party do run the risk of being hoist by their own petard.

get on TV and loudly scream "WHATS HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY?"

And solicit donations thereon.

but also those people pretty plainly saw what happened on Jan 6th, they saw Trump defending those dudes, they see the fact that he has mountains of legal issues stemming from virtually every action he takes, there are literally recorded phone calls of him outright trying to cheat, and so on and so forth so idk if this is the sort of thing that's gonna motivate people to vote. "the democrats tried to cheat in the blue states" is gonna motivate people to vote for him just as much as "how dare you shame this man for locker room talk" did in 2016

that said it would definitely be a lot better for everyone if they got this sorted out before the primaries, having him win the nomination and THEN getting kicked off the ballot is not a great look

i think my issue with the "you have to do the right thing anyway" strategy is that sometimes life is like

https://i.imgur.com/uZh0bq1.jpg

Is Jake Gyllenhaal on that track or

the person on the top track is indeed jake gyllenhaal. but on the bottom track are stephen miller, alex jones, dennis miller, desantis, and trump

oh wait, i made that really easy lol. make dennis miller and jake gyllenhaal trade places, so jake's in the group with the other horrible guys and dennis miller is by himself. would you be willing to murder miller, jones, desantis, and trump, and sacrifice jake gyllenhaal, while letting dennis miller live?!

That left turn is so sharp the car might tip, so I'd pull the lever and hope.

That's indeed what I've in mind

This blog post sums up my feelings pretty well.

"If trump is taken off the ballot his supporters will respond with violence" is literally saying the law is whatever fascists want it to be because you're afraid of them.

The Supreme Court is a Christofascist Trump-loving hive of authoritarian quislings, and they’ll almost certainly find some way to say that insurrection is totally cool when their buddy does it. But—and this is a key point—you don’t need to help Clarence Thomas and Sam “I love to torture women to death” Alito stab democracy through the fucking heart.

You don’t need to crawl on hands and knees to Trump, scraping your face raw and bloody in the hopes that he won’t be mean to you. Instead, you can use the court rulings to remind voters that yes, Trump committed insurrection, and yes, our Constitution frowns on that. You can tell coup plotters, fascists, and the rest of Trump’s MAGA horde of sycophants, bullies, and cowards that we are going to stand together for democracy, and we’re going to use whatever means are at our disposal to win.

...

This is an easy win. Trump’s a massive fascist pustule; each court ruling tossing him off the ballot is a news cycle about how he’s a massive fascist pustule. So help spread the message that he’s a massive fascist pustule! The alternative is to turn yourself into a fucking worm, squishing and sliding through Trump’s foetid orange leavings, aerating them and helping fascism grow. Don’t be that fucking worm.

“Leavings” is going to be rotating thru my conversations for the next week thank u

Thanks for that, unperson. (And thanks, all of you, for today’s discussion.)

https://i.imgur.com/8yojXc1.jpg

Sorry Jake, but the numbers don't add up for you.

We'll still have Ryan Gosling.

The Tea Party is descended from Gingrich / Contract With America, which descends from talk radio, which descends from Reagan, who descended from Goldwater, and ultimately the Klan and the Confederacy, etc.

An anti-tax, small-government, anti-federal politics is inherently a racist politics.

Sure, there is a through line straight from the Confederacy to the present day GOP and Trump is its latest heir, but the particulars of the Trump cult added a new twist in that his most crazed and loyal acolytes were basically non-voters prior to Trump because of the prevalence of conspiratorial thinking among them, as typified by the birthers. It's no coincidence Trump served as their figurehead.

booming piece

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/opinion/trump-insurrections-disqualification-14th-amendment.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LU0.cfLX.xqQybZP3qsK-&smid=url-share

Yeah it’s the most convincing thing I’ve read on what he should be disqualified. Every day I curse Pelosi for not fast tracking impeachment after January 6.

Why he should be disqualified

Look me in the eye
Then tell me that I'm unqualified

But these objections rest on a poor foundation. They treat Trump as an ordinary candidate and Jan. 6 as a variation on ordinary politics. But as the House select committee established, Jan. 6 and the events leading up to it were nothing of the sort. And while many Americans still contest the meaning of the attack on the Capitol, many Americans also contested, in the wake of the Civil War, the meaning of secession and rebellion. That those Americans viewed Confederate military and political leaders as heroes did not somehow delegitimize the Republican effort to keep them, as much as possible, out of formal political life.

What unites Trump with the former secessionists under the disqualification clause is that like them, he refused to listen to the voice of the voting public. He rejected the bedrock principle of democratic life, the peaceful transfer of power.

xxpost He was impeached 7 days after Jan. 6.

It was just enough time for Congress to scrape the feces off their desks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA9B4VU8FlM

It brings to mind that (from what I see) there's too much debate around whether or not he "planned" to have the Jan 6 mob forcefully invade to overturn the election as the specific action and goal, and not enough pointing out that regardless of the particular intention and orchestration there's the fact that there was no true effort by him to tell them to STOP once things got out of hand. This seems overly generous but I've always felt that he himself and his advisors didn't really specifically conceive of a plan to literally have the mob violently overturn the election, but instead thought things would play out as sort of a Boston Tea Party style patriotic act of defiance that would be looked back at in history books in a similar positive light. But entertaining that idea feels like a weaker position to prosecute from, though I don't think the distinction really lets him off the hook at all given the lack of action once things really got out of hand. It just feels more in line with his/their style of opportunistic narrative manipulation to "see how things play out" and then leverage plausible deniability to steer the narrative accordingly.

Back in 2021 the only way I stopped a conservative relative from babbling about Trump's culpability was when I quietly asked, "If he didn't encourage a rebellion on his behalf, then why didn't he stop it?"

sorry didn't mean to use "things got out of hand" twice, I hate when I do stuff like that

OMG and "things would play out" I guess I'm too tired to edit myself

Exactly Alfred, and in conversation it feels like the only direct response would be a rhetorical "what was he supposed to do?!" with no interest in an answer

see this is the problem, like yes if you give Trump the extreme benefit of the doubt I guess you can sorta exonerate him on this. problem is no politician in American history deserves the benefit of the doubt less than Donald Trump, the guy who will praise dictators and Nazis if they're nice to him, the guy who's defrauded every single person he's ever worked with, the guy who outright said he would only accept the results of the election if he won, the guy who was literally recorded trying to strongarm a secretary of state into "finding" more votes

regardless of who actually planned what the point is if he thought getting a mob together to storm the Capitol would actually overturn the election there is like a 100% chance he would try to do it

maybe the only way out of this that don't mek scotus look incredibly stupid or corrupt is that either 1 standards and process for finding insurrection must be required, or 2 standards and process for national or presidential balloting must be required.

re: an exception to states' rights being needed wrt balloting for national office-- pre-scotus gorsuch hisself is cited himself in CO's decision, stating that states HAVE such authority. he will need to do a little work ("well NOT for preznit," or "well NOT with regards standards for finding insurrection.")

how you find inherent contradiction or absurdity making such things required, that's where the magic is

the Jan 6th data from Trump's twitter dm's and phone acct that Jack Smith has acquired becomes public it could be interesting. I presume there must be some damning evidence there if they are going to present it to a jury.