2020 American Political Scene

[astralis]

inexile,

In 2008, just having the financial crash on their watch caused the Republicans to lose in a landslide; by modern standards. Arguably, Bush was not guilty of any specific actions or incompetence that may have resulted in the causing of the crash compared to Trump's actions in the run up to the pandemic.

Trump has a significantly stronger cult following than Bush.

see how quickly the GOP base turned on Bush after he left the Presidency.

Even stark incompetence during a pandemic resulting in over 300,000 deaths barely caused a shift of about 1% of the voters in the direction of Biden. Jokes about shooting on fifth avenue aside, it does seem there is nothing Trump could do that would lose him most of his supporters.

thankfully the actual cult core is relatively small. the crucial margin was a bunch of disaffected suburban GOP-types, whom ended up doing a split vote for Biden/GOP senator/rep.

Biden had small coat-tails, and is a warning to the Democratic Party that in many places, they didn't so much as convert large sections of suburbia to the Party, but rather got a one-time good deal.

It does seem to me that perhaps 30-40% of Americans might cheer on if Trump was able to overturn the election and usher in a more authoritarian regime.

probably the smaller number, but yeah, definitely.

[TopHatter]

The main problem with this article is the idea that people who supported Trump are 'appalled' by wha the has done. They aren't. With the exception of a handful they love him more than ever - the man got 12 million more votes than in 2016. Every single bad thing that has happened either doesn't exist or is the fault of Democrats and 'RINOs'. Zero exceptions.

He also picked the wrong World War. Trump supporters aren't defeated Nazi soldiers surveying a ruined & occupied homeland and finally realizing tghe ywere wrong. They are WW1 soldiers still loyal to the Kaiser and returning to an untouched homeland that has actually won some significant victories. Their heads are full of conspiracy theories about being stabbed in the back and they are ready to take up arms to put in place a dictator.

1945 Germany was uttely defeated and open to a complete transformation to a better model. 1918 Germany was just taking a breath before barrelling down an even darker path. Which do you think best resembles Trumpers?

Well in most cases Trumpers aren't returning home to country that was razed to the ground, or to a country beset by horrendous food shortages. No, they're going back to their McMansions and their boats, or their double-wide and raised 4x4 pickup trucks. I don't really expect widespread problems between now and January 20th. Isolated and sporadic instances of violence and even murder, yeah. Trump's Proud Boys and Oath Keepers will certainly cause problems here and there, and of course they already have.

Eventually the flags will start to come down and in some cases they already have. People will slowly lose faith and their manic devotion to Trump, but not in the primal simplicity and selfishness of Trumpism. Rock groups come and go but rock and roll lives forever.

As JRT pointed out earlier, and I've mentioned entirely too many times: Time is not on this extremely unhealthy man's side and the stress and strain of being decisively rejected by people of the United States will only accelerate his eventual demise. Dementia, first noticed in his father in 1991, took him at the age of 93 just 8 years later, but I suspect Trump won't last nearly that long. I'd say Trump's got until his mid-80's at the very most and only if he's extraordinarily lucky.

So, within 5-10 years, Trump goes the way of the dodo

The only question is, does his malignant brood pick up his political mantle and carry on just as effectively? I sincerely doubt it. They won't even be able to hold onto what's left of their grandfather's financial empire. Clogs to clogs in only three generations, and all that sort of thing...

[tbm3fan]

Why would they do that?

They won't until he fades. He won't fade as long as he makes enough money from it to make it worthwhile.

Donald J. Trump is 74 and obese. That combination of age and obesity is a recipe for the triple threat of hypertension, diabetes and arterial disease. He will eventually fade regardless what he wants.

Well, if I owned a man stream news outlet like say the NYT that is exactly what I would do. Trump may rail against NYT, and other similar outlets, that they are failing, their readership is declining, and so forth, but all that does is hide the fact that those outlets are the ones he desperately wants to acknowledge him. The NYT has been his holy grail since the 70s and no matter the story just being mentioned by the NYT was fabulous. It would kill him for them to ignore him. Speaking of that it would be similar to McCarthy right after he was put in his place. He faded into obscurity pretty fast and dies from alcoholism not long after. One could only hope the treatment for Trump could be the same but then I'm picking principle over money making...

[TopHatter]

Six Things to Know about Trump’s Defense Veto
The NDAA usually becomes law without a hitch. Trump decided to break a 59-year-long pattern for the stupidest reasons.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump vetoed the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). For the past 59 years, the NDAA has become law with comfortable congressional majorities and uneventful presidential signatures. Trump’s veto is another first in an administration of regrettable, norm-busting firsts.

Here are six things to know about it.

1. The NDAA is the first of two steps for funding the military. It authorizes spending, but it is the separate from the legislation—a defense appropriations bill, or an omnibus appropriations bill, or a continuing resolution—that instructs the Department of Treasury to give money to the Department of Defense for the coming fiscal year. Even though since 1961 there has never been an appropriation without authorization, “unauthorized” spending regularly happens for other departments. Most of the military can be funded via appropriations without a new authorization bill being passed.

However, the NDAA does more than merely direct cash flows. First, it authorizes funds for compensation for military personnel and civilians in combat zones, which expire on December 31. It also includes renewal for other compensation and benefits, such as healthcare for National Guard members, parental leave, and housing. Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services, warned that if the bill doesn’t become law, “Members of Congress [would be] going home for Christmas while many military families would have their pay go down.” It looks like that’s what’s now happening.

2. Without the NDAA, several military construction projects cannot proceed. According to Bloomberg Government, “the Pentagon would miss out on almost $6 billion for new construction projects to protect military bases, munitions, and nuclear weapons” if NDAA does not become law. This is part of the reason that, for almost six decades, the legislation has been considered “must pass” even though the military can technically operate without it.

3. Most importantly, the NDAA helps set the national military policy. Sometimes, these changes are not very significant. Sometimes they are. The 2015 NDAA included the European Reassurance Initiative (originally called the European Deterrence Initiative) to correct the embarrassing state of American forces in Europe when Russia seized Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014: Faced with the first armed seizure of territory on the continent since World War II, the United States had no tanks anywhere in Europe. The new NDAA that Trump vetoed has a similar provision strengthening American military posture in Asia called the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI). Under the new NDAA, it would be the military policy of the United States to rapidly increase deterrence of China in Asia-Pacific region.

4. Congress can still appropriate funds for all of the items that the NDAA calls for, such as three new “silent” submarines and 79 F-35 stealth fighter jets, and the Department of Defense can deploy however many of them to the Asia-Pacific region it deems fit. Under the NDAA, however, it will be a part of national policy, enshrined in law, to direct these additional resources towards that region. Making such policy through law ensures congressional buy-in, telling allies and adversaries that both elected branches of the government are unified. In this case, Congress is signaling that, after Trump is gone, the United States will still recognize the threat from China. Trump has said that the NDAA is a gift to China; in reality, his veto of the bill is a gift to General Secretary Xi Jinping.

5. There are two reasons that Trump vetoed the bill. The first fight came over the military bases named after Confederate generals. It is ridiculous that the United States military has for so long honored those traitors who killed its members and sought to topple the United States government. It makes just as much sense to have a base named after Robert E. Lee as it would to have a Fort Benedict Arnold.

Many respected military leaders have expressed support for renaming the bases, most prominently retired Army Gen. David Petraeus. Another retired Army general, Stanley McChrystal, wrote that he had thrown out the portrait of Lee that he used to own. Marine Corps Commandant David Berger banned the rebel flag on Marine bases.

Trump says he doesn’t like losers, but to make an exception for rebel leaders like Lee and Braxton Bragg, he’s willing to stonewall (so to speak) the military’s funding and policy process. Someone ought to tell the president that Bragg was captured.

6. The second reason for Trump’s veto is somehow even more ridiculous. He is annoyed that some social media have been fact-checking him. The easy way to fix the problem is to stop lying. Trump, however, wants to get rid of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that liberates websites from being legally liable for what their users post. How will that help with the fact-checking? It won’t. It will require them to be even more rigorous to avoid legal problems. But Trump threatened earlier this month to veto the NDAA if it did not also repeal section 230—which, to be clear, has nothing to do with military policy.

The commander-in-chief brags about being tough on China and loving the troops, but he is trying to cut benefits for uniformed servicemembers and reject a policy of deterring Chinese aggression so he can honor treason and annoy Twitter. January 20 can’t come soon enough.
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Oh yeah, Trump loves the military alrighty....Except for POWs, KIAs and WIAs. They're not heroes, they're just losers.

So is this how you "drain the swamp" or "Make America Great Again" or whatever line of horseshit he usually feeds to his cult?

[Bigfella]

Well in most cases Trumpers aren't returning home to country that was razed to the ground, or to a country beset by horrendous food shortages. No, they're going back to their McMansions and their boats, or their double-wide and raised 4x4 pickup trucks. I don't really expect widespread problems between now and January 20th. Isolated and sporadic instances of violence and even murder, yeah. Trump's Proud Boys and Oath Keepers will certainly cause problems here and there, and of course they already have.

Eventually the flags will start to come down and in some cases they already have. People will slowly lose faith and their manic devotion to Trump, but not in the primal simplicity and selfishness of Trumpism. Rock groups come and go but rock and roll lives forever.

As JRT pointed out earlier, and I've mentioned entirely too many times: Time is not on this extremely unhealthy man's side and the stress and strain of being decisively rejected by people of the United States will only accelerate his eventual demise. Dementia, first noticed in his father in 1991, took him at the age of 93 just 8 years later, but I suspect Trump won't last nearly that long. I'd say Trump's got until his mid-80's at the very most and only if he's extraordinarily lucky.

So, within 5-10 years, Trump goes the way of the dodo

The only question is, does his malignant brood pick up his political mantle and carry on just as effectively? I sincerely doubt it. They won't even be able to hold onto what's left of their grandfather's financial empire. Clogs to clogs in only three generations, and all that sort of thing...

Trump & his family don't overly worry me. They might even be a positive from the POV of messing up the GOP & keeoing those who opposed Trump focussed.

What worries me is that a whole bunch of GOP voters have finally arrived at the destination the party has been toying with for a couple of decades - democracy is a bad idea because it means Republicans don't always retain power. I'm not expecting them to take up arms and attempt to bring down the Republic (well, not many of them). What I am expecting is that they spend the next decade purging the party of the sort of people who actually stood up for democracy this time.

Enough elements of Trumpism will survive for someone else to forge them into something just as dangerous but in an environment with even fewer checks & balances.

[TopHatter]

I'm not expecting them to take up arms and attempt to bring down the Republic (well, not many of them). What I am expecting is that they spend the next decade purging the party of the sort of people who actually stood up for democracy this time.

Enough elements of Trumpism will survive for someone else to forge them into something just as dangerous but in an environment with even fewer checks & balances.

Yeah definitely. Frankly as long as people have food to eat and a roof over their head, they're not going to take up arms en masse. And, sadly, even if they do, their results will be devastating....to them.

[TopHatter]

Top presidential historian on Trump's legacy: 'He was largely responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans who did not need to die'

Michael Beschloss, a prominent presidential historian, in an interview with MSNBC this week said that historians will need time to fully assess President Donald Trump's legacy but that he'll never be able to escape the COVID-19 death toll.

"Donald Trump is not going to change the record. He was largely responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans who did not need to die," Beschloss said. "Millions of others who suffered from covid did not need to suffer…This is really Nero's fiddling while Rome burns."

The US has the highest numbers of reported COVID-19 cases and fatalities in the world.

As of Wednesday morning, there have been over 19.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and nearly 339,000 reported deaths from the virus in the US, according to Johns Hopkins. Public health experts have consistently criticized Trump's handling of the pandemic, contending that a more coherent response from the president could've prevented tens of thousands of deaths.

Beschloss and Mehdi Hasan, who interviewed the historian while guest-hosting MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes," also excoriated Trump over his recent actions that nearly derailed the newest COVID-19 stimulus bill.

Trump delayed economic assistance to millions Americans by initially refusing to sign a $900 billion COVID-19 stimulus package this month. The president said he wanted the $600 direct payments included as part of the legislation to be bumped up to $2000.

But Trump's last-minute demands went against what his own treasury secretary and Republican leaders in Congress had pushed for in lengthy, tedious negotiations over the stimulus with Democrats. Critics of the president have said he essentially delayed desperately needed assistance to Americans in order to score cheap political points.

Beschloss said that top-ranked presidents, such as Abraham Lincoln, were known for their compassion and empathy. But Trump does not qualify in this regard, he said.

"Donald Trump is the kind of person that we have never ever seen before in the presidency, and I hope we never ever see again," Beschloss said. "When you've got a president who has no empathy, who has no compassion, you see a spectacle like what we've seen this week."
_______

[InExile]

Trump & his family don't overly worry me. They might even be a positive from the POV of messing up the GOP & keeoing those who opposed Trump focussed.

What worries me is that a whole bunch of GOP voters have finally arrived at the destination the party has been toying with for a couple of decades - democracy is a bad idea because it means Republicans don't always retain power. I'm not expecting them to take up arms and attempt to bring down the Republic (well, not many of them). What I am expecting is that they spend the next decade purging the party of the sort of people who actually stood up for democracy this time.

Enough elements of Trumpism will survive for someone else to forge them into something just as dangerous but in an environment with even fewer checks & balances.

Yes, this is what I think is the danger as well. If the actions of a few key Republican office holders had been different; say like Brian Kemp, Rafsenberger or Doug Ducey, the US could have been plunged into a constitutional crisis. What if in ten years time, these officials have been replaced by Trumpist hardlinders who have no qualms with abusing the power of their office? This time the courts rejected every single lawsuit that was brought by Trump campaign, what if the Republicans manage to appoint Trumpists in key judicial positions?

I don't think the American Republic is in any immediate danger of being overthrown, even given the state of the Republican party. However, it took about a 100 years for the Roman Republic to fall from the time of the Grachii brothers to Octavian. I think the further decline of democratic institutions in the US due to Trumpism or whatever might follow it is definitely a possibility.

[InExile]

Moreover, it appears that in theory, Congress can reject electors and thus overturn an election by a simple majority vote in both houses.

There doesn't seem anything that might stop party from attempting this; besides a fear of being wiped out in subsequent elections to the Congress.