U.S. Electile Dementia paralytica 2020

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

That's quite a lot of ascribing motives you did. The fact is, I couldn't get in to Jacobin's web site. Google cache gave an Error 404. If the article's posted elsewhere, I didn't find it.

It doesn't really matter to me anyway. I already don't think Biden is a good candidate.

Ah, you omitted that bit of 404-error context in your post. Weird, I've never had a problem viewing the Jacobin site. So we are in violent agreement on the avuncular handsy senator from MBNA.

[ewmayer]

The Official Democratic Debates Drinking Game | Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

[ewmayer]

Taibbi in Iowa: Dems Are Repeating GOP’s 2016 Primary-Season Errors | Rolling Stone

[ewmayer]

Trump 2020: Be Very Afraid | Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone: America is the first country to ever elect a Mad King, and the way things are going, we may be dumb enough to do it twice

The most common remark you hear from Trump voters is that he’s “relatable” and isn’t “phony.” Blue-state audiences tempted to howl at this should try to understand this phenomenon, because it speaks to a legitimate problem Democrats have.

The average American likes meat, sports, money, porn, cars, cartoons, and shopping. Less popular: socialism, privilege-checking, and the world ending in 10 years. Ironically, perhaps because of Trump, Democratic Party rhetoric in 2020 is relentlessly negative about the American experience. Every speech is a horror story about synagogue massacres or people dying without insulin or atrocities at the border. Republicans who used to complain about liberals “apologizing for America” were being silly, but 2020 Democrats sound like escapees from the Killing Fields.

Ronald Reagan once took working-class voters away from Democrats by offering permission to be proud of the flag. Trump offers permission to occupy the statistical American mean: out of shape, suffering from gas, poorly read, anti-intellectual, treasuring things above meaning, and hiding an awful credit history.

Trump in this way is more all-American than Mark Spitz, Liberace, Oprah, Audie Murphy, and Marilyn Monroe. He’s a monument to the consumption economy. He represents fake boobs, the short con, the tall tale, gas guzzlers, and a hundred other American traditions.

This is why the endless chronicling of Trump’s lies does little to dent his popularity. Trump’s voters don’t need to read PolitiFact to see what Trump’s about. They see it in his waistline. Few politicians in history have revealed what they are to voters more than Trump. Christ, we even know what the man’s penis looks like.

“The cool thing about Trump,” says 38-year-old Cincinnati native Jeremy Holtkamp, “is that it’s just about being an American.”

Trump’s political strategy is primitive but effective. He picks something that polls badly, and kicks it in the crotch. Then he backs off and lets three eternal truths do the rest of the work.

One: A news media that pretends moral outrage will greedily cover his every move (cable-news profits have soared 36 percent since Trump began his run four years ago).

Two: In a fractured political landscape, the so-called “legitimate” politicians who are his main competition will spend more time fighting one another than him. This is because intellectuals can’t bring themselves to take Trump’s dumbed-down version of politics seriously.

Third: America’s upper classes and their proxies in government and media have no capacity for self-reflection, and will make asses of themselves in a fight. This is where Trump makes his living, getting people who should know better to rise to his bait. It’s a simple formula: Incite brawls that seem like clear political losers, only to eventually maneuver controversies to his advantage.

Trump launched his 2020 re-election campaign on June 18th in Orlando. Within a month, he was picking his first major campaign fight. The backdrop was Trump’s decision to increase the number of criminal prosecutions for illegal border entry. His innovation was making systematic the separation of families in custody, a move that seemed to have no practical purpose except as a deterrent of the Game of Thrones heads-on-spikes variety.

When everyone from the American Academy of Pediatrics to his wife to Lindsey Graham expressed revulsion — dude, kids? — Trump finally signed an executive order reversing the policy. He then characteristically blamed the mess on Democrats. By then, the situation had become a fiasco and, like all things in the Trump era, a media goat rope of monstrous proportions.

In response, House Speaker Pelosi and her “mighty moderates” attempted to pass a bipartisan border bill backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Progressives who have called for the entire border-enforcement machinery to be reformed freaked.

A representative from Wisconsin compared Democratic moderates to child abusers, and debonair Twitter subversive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cried, “Hell, no.” When Pelosi yawned back at Ocasio-Cortez and three other young female members for “their public whatever and their Twitter world,” the Bronx congresswoman called Pelosi out for the “singling out of newly elected women of color.”

In perhaps the most predictable moment of his presidency, a gleeful Trump jumped on this Democrat-on-Democrat racial food fight. Using the backdrop of Marine One, he said Ocasio-Cortez was being “very disrespectful,” adding, “I don’t think Nancy can let that go on.”

Nancy! The lascivious familiarity with which Trump dropped her name must have stuck like a tongue in Pelosi’s ear. The speaker, from that moment, was cornered. A step forward meant welcoming the boils-and-all embrace of Donald Trump. A step back meant bitter intramural surrender and a likely trip to intersectionality re-education camp.

A normal, self-aware politician, meaning one who is not Donald Trump, would have waited for Pelosi to step off this land mine. But Trump then issued his infamous tweet about “the squad” — Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tliab, and Ayanna Pressley — needing to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

For the 10 millionth time since he launched his presidential campaign, Trump seemed to make a fatal miscalculation, revealing himself to be a meandering, incoherent racist on a political suicide mission. But we should recognize by now, these outbursts by Trump are never fatal.

The practical impact of Trump’s summer freakouts was to make everyone on Earth forget the original controversy. Instead, the country ended up engaged in a full-scale melee over Pelosi’s racial attitudes, the relative dirtiness of Baltimore, whether or not Al Sharpton hates white people, and a dozen other questions.

Soon, the Democratic candidates were in such a fury about all things immigration that they ganged up on hapless Joe Biden for not stopping the “Deporter-in-Chief,” Obama.

This was classic Trump. He creates controversies so quickly that no one can keep track of them all. When the dust settles, everyone is covered with welts and King Donald is bragging about having done it all on purpose, which he may have. In the end, what everyone remembers is Trump antagonists tying themselves in knots over his whims.
...
America is messed up, sure, but are we this messed up? What if we didn’t have a perma-tweeting Archie Bunker president, or turned off our TVs? Trump’s 2016 victory only happened with a slew of unwitting accomplices. Republicans split the primary vote, Democrats nominated a high-negatives insider, and the media not only tossed to Trump billions of dollars in free coverage, but also constantly validated his mockery with snooty mis-predictions. A child knows not to fall for the pull-my-finger joke a second time. But the assembled brainpower of institutional America seems determined to clear a path for Trump by playing straight man again.

[Dr Sardonicus]

I'm surprise this hasn't been posted here already. FEC Commissioner Matthew Peters resigned yesterday. The Federal Election Commission now has only three members. This means it lacks a quorum, for which at least four members are needed.

[rogue]

This Trump parody song is quite funny.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by rogue

This Trump parody song is quite funny.

That is a HOOT!

[ewmayer]

Would that mockery alone could win elections ... but I fear if anything, the reverse it true: mockery can easily lose one an election, by revealing one to be a smug arrogant elitist. Cf. Hillary's mocking 'deplorables' comment in 2016.

[kladner]

It won't win elections, but it cheers the troops.
EDIT: Besides, everything is fake anyhow.

[rogue]

I know it is a few years too early, but Don Jr in 2024.

Maybe Don Sr should switch from Pence to Don Jr for the 2020 election.

I'm waiting for the Republican push for this. That would allow Trump to be more closely aligned with his hero, Vladimir Putin. Then maybe he can build a demilitarized zone between the US and Mexico to emulate Kim Jun Um and pass his presidency on to his son.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by rogue

I'm waiting for the Republican push for this. That would allow Trump to be more closely aligned with his hero, Vladimir Putin. Then maybe he can build a demilitarized zone between the US and Mexico to emulate Kim Jun Um and pass his presidency on to his son.

Presidency for life as currently permitted by the Constitution would not allow Il Duce to do much of anything after 2024.

As best I can recall my US history, we have had eight presidents for life since the founding of the republic.