U.S. Presidential Election 2020

For the Republcans the death spiral has begun. They’ve already crawled back under their rock and are back to being consumed by self interest.

I doubt it, there’s too much power and money at stake – the GoP will survive just fine. The best that could be hoped for is a split with another party forming (officially or as organised independents) and running against Dems & GoP in the mid-terms. That should just end up increasing the Dem majority in both Houses and cause enough of Republican panic that it all comes back together to fight the common ‘enemy’ of the Dems in 2024.

That said I think it’s far more likely there won’t be much open division and they’ll just circle the wagons and make sure GoP Reps/Senators are a bit smarter when using social media for a while. Sadly that’s probably sufficient for them to win back the Senate in the mid-terms (due to Dem voter apathy) and then it’s anyone’s guess for 2024 – depends a lot who’s running for the GoP, struggling to believe it will be Trump but another vile idiot like Cruz is a possibility (I can only assume that’s why he’s acting how he is).

All political parties are coalitions of different interest groups. FPTP electoral systems mean that only two major parties can realistically compete for power. The Republican Party is on the wrong side of demographic change, with young people and city dwellers tending to vote Democrat. After Romney’s defeat, they did an “autopsy” and concluded that they needed to appeal to centrist non-white voters. Part of that was immigration reform. I am not a fan of the Republican Party, but many of them were serious about immigration reform and other more moderate policies. However, their base strongly rejected that and doubled down on old fashioned anti-immigrant nonsense. Trump was just the guy that said out loud what a lot of people believed. Many centrist Republicans did not agree with that, but they didn’t take it seriously. They thought Trump was a successful businessman who would sort out the economy. They didn’t believe he would actually do the crazy things he said, and they also believed there were institutional guardrails against it.

So, now the Republican Party has been taken over by right-wing extremists and the remaining moderates are saying they are shocked and don’t know how this happened. It’s difficult to see the coalition surviving after last week’s attempted coup, but it’s not obvious which faction will dominate. In the long term, an extreme right wing racist party is not electorally viable because they need the centrist voters, but they have enough votes in the party to banish anyone who crosses them. My guess is that the moderates will be expelled from the Republican Party and it will become a QAnon fringe party. The moderates will then have to build a centrist party and try to split the Squaddists and Sanders crew from the centrist Biden voters. Gonna be a rough few years.

I’m just worried about how “fringe” a QAnon Party would be. These people are not rational thinkers and having a real party would just legitimise the whole thing. I think we’d see a lot more Comet Ping Pong style attacks to rescue non-existent children, probably on a larger scale.

I’m just worried about how “fringe” a QAnon Party would be.

Yep, there are millions of nutters out there who believe that nonsense. It was pretty chilling how quickly they turned on Mike Pence when he finally admitted that the election was lost. If they won’t listen to Mike Pence, it’s pretty difficult to see how anybody will ever convince them that the stuff they believe is just fairy tales.

The GOP has inherited Trumpism as it attempts to break itself free of Trump. I think that most sane Republicans – and there are still some – see the scale of the problem and the difficulties presented.

Make no mistake, what we’ve emerge in the US since 2015 has been funded and abetted by some odious and calculating individuals. Remove the funding by holding the donors to account and the narrative will change. That’s the dilemma facing the GOP.

Make no mistake, what we’ve emerge in the US since 2015 1992 has been funded and abetted by some odious and calculating individuals.

FTFY. That’s when I started taking notice of U.S. politics. I’m pretty sure this goes back at least to 1960, when they didn’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more.

The thing that I can’t, yet, grasp is how many of the Americans actually believe in Qanon nonsense (obviously there are some) and how many just go along with it because it’s something to talk about with like-minded people.

In their heart of hearts, does anyone really believe that Hilary Clinton and a bunch of Hollywood actors harvest spines of children so they can drink child-juice? It’s a bit like people who go to Sci-Fi conventions and dress up and talk like superheroes. It’s a wild fantasy that’s kinda fun. If / hopefully when the wheels come off the Qanon / Trump train, how many of those people will just return to their jobs and stop engaging in fairy tale stuff?

I suppose that’s the bizarre calculation that the GOP has to do right now.

In recent years a substantial number of people would have believed that child abuse rings were commonplace in the UK political establishment

It’s a bit like people who go to Sci-Fi conventions and dress up and talk like superheroes. It’s a wild fantasy that’s kinda fun.

That was the impression I got watching the live streams of the riot at the Capitol, for a lot of people there the whole thing is at least partly a live action role-play, and some were genuinely shocked that there might be real life consequences.

In recent years a substantial number of people would have believed that child abuse rings were commonplace in the UK political establishment

Kind of a fair point but there’s a significant leap from there to baby-eating satanic worshippers who form part of a one-world government. And again, there are elements that are true:

The political establishment spent decades turning “a blind eye” to allegations of child sexual abuse, with high-profile politicians protected from police action as whips sought to avoid “gossip and scandal” which would damage the parties, a scathing report has found.

The long-awaited Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) report involving MPs, peers and civil servants working in Westminster found political institutions “significantly failed in their responses to allegations of child sexual abuse”.

That’s the crux though – child abuse rings do exist. That’s the tiny grip on reality that they hang the whole thing on.

Any attempt to question anything that they say therefore means you are protecting child abusers and are probably a nonce.

Biden, Harris and the Pope have all been “arrested” in recent days according to QAnon. The fact that they clearly haven’t is just to confuse the media. Trust the plan. Storm is coming. Cabal will fall. etc etc

A look at how some of the data we'll be using in our investigation of the events of January 6th was gathered from Parler https://t.co/Uc1NgA4uxB

— Bellingcat (@bellingcat) January 13, 2021

That’s the crux though – child abuse rings do exist. That’s the tiny grip on reality that they hang the whole thing on.

Every lie has a grain of truth eh?

My guess is that the moderates will be expelled from the Republican Party and it will become a QAnon fringe party.

Just like our problem right here with Tory Brexishamblers, that man frog Farage and the Leave lot.

The US far right fringe is way more loony tunes than the ERG or whatever, do we think that may present opportunity for the GOP to shed them quicker than we can lose the Brextards?

In their heart of hearts, does anyone really believe that Hilary Clinton and a bunch of Hollywood actors harvest spines of children so they can drink child-juice?

look up pizzagate and Edgar Welch

That’s a great story the way people collaborated to get it done. Now the Parler folks are outraged that they might be held accountable for violent hate speech and planning a riot.

It’s easier to persuade a group of people to believe one big lie, than a myriad of small ones.

Family of Roseanne Boyland say they blame Trump for inciting a riot:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZS3BKQ6V/

(Roseanne was a QAnon follower. As was Ashli Babbitt, the lady who was shot)

Q is now meta-conspiracy – one big lie made up of pretty much every other conspiracy theory out there.

This is an interesting if sad read:

This is a remarkable article. Textbook story of radicalization https://t.co/dnNngtRnVA

— Tom Wright (@thomaswright08) January 12, 2021

From 1988 to 2016 there were 3 federal executions, under GW Bush

Under Trump:
2017: 0
2018: 0
2019: 0
2020: 10 (since July, 4 since he lost the election)
2021: 1 with another scheduled for tomorrow

Says it all really.
The one can any normal person would be happy to kick down the road untill you left office..

…depends a lot who’s running for the GoP, struggling to believe it will be Trump but another vile idiot like Cruz is a possibility (I can only assume that’s why he’s acting how he is).

After seeing his speech last Wednesday, I get it. He’s the political Saul Goodman, both visually and ethically.

You’d think having previously campaigned for the death penalty for kids who turned out to be innocent he might have seen the error of his ways on executions, but of course not

There’s some bitter irony in his calls for law and order.

‘keep us safe from those who would prey on innocent lives to fulfil some distorted inner need’

thols2,

I think the phrase was

“There’s just not enough angry white men out there anymore”.

That didn’t take into account all the angry white women out there who Trump tapped into (no pun intended) in 2016 and all the crazy people out there, who Trump tapped into in 2020. Along with the fact that the Republicans wouldnt have won an election this cemtury without massive voter suppression, I think we can say the bottom of the barrel has been truly scraped. The Republicans Party is now an empty shell.

A split in the Republican party would be a death spiral. Most of the party splits we have seen have cleaved towards the centre, this one cleaves to the extremist lunatic fringe, a fringe that consists of about 35 million people and is in need of a haircut.

If they end up with 3 parties, one of them would be a fascist party. Not good. In the short term that would give the Democrats hegemony but through the election cycles Dems would slowly migrate to the Republican party. In the medium term that could move the centre ground significantly to the right.

In the long term demographics will probably have their say. Of course if the Americans had sorted their democracy out by stopping voter suppression and structured a Senate that reflected the will of the people then we probably wouldn’t have got here in the first place.

It’s a bit like people who go to Sci-Fi conventions and dress up and talk like superheroes. It’s a wild fantasy that’s kinda fun.

I Think there’s more to it than that, there were plenty of MAGA hat wearing, baby eating conspiracy subscribers at the capitol last week. But there were also a good sprinkling of far right Militia types there, with their tactical vests and zipcuffs.

Watching the (perhaps slightly sensationalist) ITV mini-doc thing last night it’s clear this “movement” has more than one component and Trump is just fine with that. The conspiracy nutters were mostly just up for a jolly day out and to some extent got caught up in the moment, the Militants had come with plans and were directing people towards the Speaker’s office and seeking specific people, the “protest” was useful cover. And well, someone planted those three pipe bombs…

All you really need is broad alignment on a handful of topics, and a figurehead for these seemingly disparate fringe types to coalesce into one unified group…

The real worry now must be the Inauguration… WTF are they planning for that?

think we can say the bottom of the barrel has been truly scraped. The Republicans Party is now an empty shell

They still got over 70 million votes, they got more votes in 2020 than in 2016 (yes, from a bigger population). Biden didn’t win in some crushing landslide. I’d love for the republicans to be politically irrelevant, but they’re not. Yes, the last week or so might have put off a few swing voters, but a good proportion of GOP voters supported not just challenging the election, but the violent attack on the Capitol.

The conspiracy nutters were mostly just up for a jolly day out and to some extent got caught up in the moment, the Militants had come with plans and were directing people towards the Speaker’s office and seeking specific people, the “protest” was useful cover. And well, someone planted those three pipe bombs…

The real worry now must be the Inauguration… WTF are they planning for that?

Yup,it looks like Trump is the green light that they have been waiting for.

I think we can say the bottom of the barrel has been truly scraped.

There’s another barrel under that barrel. That’s where Trump’s headed.

In recent years a substantial number of people would have believed that child abuse rings were commonplace in the UK political establishment

Kincora boys home. thats a real example of peodos in the establishment and a cover up

Biden didn’t win in some crushing landslide.

He sort of did though. 7 million more popular votes (51.3% vs Trump’s 46.9%). And the same electoral college numbers that was called a “landslide” to Trump in 2016.

Don’t get me wrong: I’d have been very happy to see Biden win by much more, but I think it is a much more convincing victory than people believe. (Unfortunately due more to people wanting rid of Trump than Biden being a particularly good choice)

This is an interesting if sad read:

That’s desperately sad. And so telling of the state of the country over there. Young person so disaffected that he is unemployed and lives in an old school bus, denied unemployment help.

That guy will probably end up in a federal prison. The people that conspired to ultimately put him there? Nothing will happen.

Those pinko-liberal Cheney’s plotting to destroy the GOP from within.

He expects that the Cheney family will be greeted as liberators.

— Ed Bott (@edbott) January 13, 2021

He sort of did though. 7 million more popular votes (51.3% vs Trump’s 46.9%).

I’ll put my hands up and admit that’s a slightly bigger difference than I thought, I think because I stopped paying attention one it was obvious Biden had won and I missed some of the later updates to the count. But….

Biden got over 11m votes in California, you could move 5 million of those somewhere else and he would still have won the state and 100% of its electoral college votes.

In contrast, he got 79 EC votes from States where he won by less than 5%, a total of 311k votes made the difference, and 154k of those were in Michigan. Even without that, a swing of 157k votes out of 20 million gives 63 EC votes to the Republicans for Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

[edit: actually I think it’s half of 157k that would need to change, so ~80k, because if you voted D this time but next time you vote R that’s giving one vote to R AND taking one vote off D]

A tiny bit more apathy next time around and the R candidate could take them all. That’s the problem with the all or nothing EC system I suppose. Obviously they’ll still get destroyed in California, Vermont etc. But an extra million Dem votes in places like that make no difference to the outcome. So it’s as much about where the votes are as it is about how many of them you get. As Trump proved in 2016!

A tiny bit more apathy next time around and the R candidate could take them all. That’s the problem with the all or nothing EC system I suppose.

It’s one of the problems, the other being that the EC votes are not proportionally allocated to the population. I think it exists to make our own FPTP system look sane.

A tiny bit more apathy next time around and the R candidate could take them all.

Thing is, Trump is utterly polarizing and I think he’s what drove turnout on both sides. If he’s not on the GOP ticket, turnout on both sides will probably drop. The GOP has to try to distance themselves from Trump or they will never lure back moderates, but if they do that, they will lose the Trumpist loons. I doubt that there will be another candidate able to do what Trump did in 2016. If the GOP candidate is polarizing, it will probably motivate Democrats more than Republicans. If they generate apathy, that will probably hurt Republicans more than Democrats.

Other thing to keep in mind is that nobody knows what the issues will be in 2024. The economy might be booming, it might be in a catastrophic depression. Relations with Russia and China might be relatively cooperative, they might have descended into outright conflict. Biden might be running for reelection as a new Ronald Reagan, he might retire as a failure. Completely unpredictable.

The House of Representatives has opened its session on impeachment. Result expected this evening our time.

The House of Representatives has opened its session on impeachment. Result expected this evening our time.

Anyone know how many republicans are ready to break rank though? Like the last impeachment (can’t belive that’s a thing, but hey) any chance of success would rely on that?

I so want to see him cuffed and escourted out… but I suspect he’ll be playing golf somewhere so that won’t happen.

Anyone know how many republicans are ready to break rank though?

No and that won’t come into play until the Senate “court” hearing which requires a 2/3rds majority. This is the initial call to impeach and requires a simple majority. Expectations are that will be easy.

Anyone know how many republicans are ready to break rank though?

5 republicans are expected to vote for impeachment in the house according to the grauniad

2 republican senators have said they will and McConnel has said he believes Trump committed impeachable offenses

A) This vote will almost certainly pass since the Dems have a majority in the House.

B) The interesting question is how many Rs vote against Trump. Essentially they have no practical reason to vote for impeachment (it’ll succeed without them, see point A), but any on-the-fence Senate Republicans will be watching the fallout very closely.

If a substantial number of House Rs vote to impeach AND they don’t get slaughtered by the media / twitter / public opinion, then Republican Senators may be emboldened to remove Trump from office. Today is a weather vane for what may happen at the senate impeachment hearings.

Sadly even if he is impeached he will wear it as another badge of style thing, it will be seen as further ‘evidence’ that they are stealing the election from him. He will blow it up into something once again about him.

4 years of constant me, me, me is bloody draining on the brain (for me at least 4000 miles away watching), but to those in the US its been akin to a condensed version of the Daily Heil headlines for the last 40 years over here. It’s no wonder so many turned up last week.

The Republicans will be in full on damage limitation mode – the Joint Chiefs have publicly condemned last week’s events as “sedition” and have acknowledged Biden’s win. CNBC Reports

Colin Powell also made a stinging rebuke, it’s clear that senior figures in the military expect the GOP to get their clown show in order.

Sadly even if he is impeached *twice* he will wear it as another badge of style thing, it will be seen as further ‘evidence’ that they are stealing the election from him. He will blow it up into something once again about him.

Fixed.

But as others have said, it has to pass the upper house with a 2/3rds vote. Unlikely. Is this just a waste of time and effort? Trump is out on his ear anyway, so why they don’t just let nature take its course in due time and focus on more productive endevours?