I wouldn't put too much stock in Rona Romney's fundraising pitch. The RNC has been bankrupted by Trump--literally bankrupted. Trump's campaign wildly overspent in the dumbest of markets (tens of millions of dollars buying ads to run in Washington, DC just so Trump could see them, for example). And so now the RNC has to scramble to just keep the lights on and the doors open.
And there's also the fact that she's adhering to the Great Conservative Dictum: Always Be Grifting. Since Trump's most fanatical followers are 100% on board with "THE ELECTION WUZ STOLEN!!!!!", it's only natural to exploit that for fundraising purposes. Take all their money and use it for other things like paying down campaign debt or paying Trump's legal bills. And maybe making sure that Rona's paycheck clears every two weeks.
A lot of people have pointed out that while Giuliani and other lawyers have been screaming about fraud on twitter and in media appearances, they don’t allege fraud in court – because if they deliberately lie to a judge they can get disciplined and possibly disbarred. But what I find even more ridiculous is how they are pretending for the rubes they can introduce new super-secret “proof” of fraud once they get in front of SCOTUS.
This is getting more and more dangerous, not because Trump will succeed but because Trump will ultimately fail. The absolute best that can be hoped for at this point is that after January 20th the MAGAts will seamlessly turn their hopes to 2024, sort of the way the QAnon shit morphs into something new each time a predicted date for all to be revealed passes by uneventfully. The worst-case scenario is bloodshed.
•What the modern GOP has offered has been hate and lies and fear. That's because all they have to offer -- an extractive economy for their special interests, a complete disregard for the nation's people, etc., etc., etc.
•Speaking of the GOP, my favorite tool of theirs is the perversion of language. While no system is perfect, to err is human, etc., etc., etc., funky tabulation of ballots is an intrinsic part of the system. Personally, I'm'a going to my grave convinced that Wisconsin in 2016 was rigged. That is, Donnie didn't legitimately win the state, Scott Walker did it for him. Anyway. When the GOP claims the Dems are cheating, I take it as an admission that they're the true cheaters.
•Two pieces that scare the shit out of me, neither of which I can or would argue with:
•A factoid maybe: That move to sketchy e-voting has been, I believe, tend to be pushed by the GOP.
•One of the things I ponder more and more: How come elections are so close so often?
•As I'm sure I've ranted, we're not a democracy and not even a republic in any meaningful. American Democracy = Soma. I'd say we're close enough to being a fascist state (of we're not actually one) that the characterization is an operative one. (Actual democracy requires a healthy opposition party, which we haven't had since the 90s at least.)
hah! must respectfully disagree with the sub-hed here, unless you're referring to our camp as the American People. you most definitely can not be too much as an asshole for the 47.2%. otherwise I sign on completely to this newsletter!
Can't say I actually agree with you this time. I think Mencken was right: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the American public. Therefore, you can't be too much of an asshole for the American People.
Look at the down ticket races and the losses in the House. Trump is too tacky and icky for those who are our rulers, but his policies are just OK by them. Combine that with the fact that advertising works, and we have two right wing political parties, and here you are.
As far as 2000 and 2004 I'd argue that the Democrats needed to do more than they did, they didn't need to go the full Trump route, but they needed to try to nail the Republican shenanigans right then. But they chose not to, for comity I guess, to show they were the bigger people. Where did that get them, or for that matter us?
Republican assholes are never going away. After Germany’s disastrous embrace of Nazis, they made Nazis illegal. And they still have Nazis! We have to reverse the changes Republicans have made at state and federal levels that give them minority control. That depends on taking the Senate. It’s a long shot but if McConnell maintains control of the Senate, the Nazis will continue to drive the country toward the oligarchic religio-fascism they’ve been dreaming of since Nixon ripped away the pleasant Eisenhower facade and showed the true face of 20th century Republicanism: bigotry welded to amorality in the pursuit of power.
"a big part of the reason people vote for Democrats in the first place is because they don’t do shit like Republicans do — and that Biden beat Trump mainly because Americans were sick of Trump’s nonsense and wanted to be represented by a non-asshole"
It might not be true, but it's a faith worth living in, and the kind of thing faith can really bring about.
In my ever so humble opinion I think Americans love assholes because most of them are assholes themselves. But that's an unscientific opinion probably based upon my own experiences dealing with my fellow Americans. But a country with the highest incarceration rate in the world that sends folks like this guy -
As long as Red State legs gerrymander themselves to stay in power indefinitely, the Goon Party will remain at least a regional force for the indefinite future. I know of only one state, Virginia, that has flipped from being as Red as can be to being reliably Blue and with their new non-partisan electoral district commission will probably not look back. CO is definitely heading that way too but they may still wobble. Same with NV. The other swing states that flipped this year all have Goon legislatures that aren't going blue anytime soon and so will be vulnerable to the never-ending Goon electoral ratfucking.
These days, on Twitter, when some smart guy (e.g. Todd Starnes) asks, "Do you really mean to say that 80 million people love Biden that much?" it triggers a massive tsunami of replies, all of which say, "No, you idiot. It means that 80 million people hate Trump because he's so hateful." So THAT'S fun.
I don't think the GOP will change, snap out of it, improve, etc. At this point, if you dance with the one which brung ya, they're stuck dancing with the MAGAts, which means they'll need every dirty trick, lie, scam, and "shenanigan" in the book to please their date. Whether this will destroy the party, I don't know. I don't know what that means, actually. Although I can see a situation in which the looniest far-right contingent splits off from the not-that-insane half, as seems to be the inevitable mitosis of radical politics. Which one gets to call itself The Republican Party will be interesting to see.
This was right on the money. As you point out, the main difference between past elections and now could almost be summed up by the Times headline in 2004, "Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried". Gore, Kerry, and Democratic leaders never uttered words like "rigged" or "fraud" or even suggested anything that would undermine the fragile trust in elections. If nothing else, it was considered bad form. Now, it's all top-down lunacy and years of it: from Trump, his band of radical nutjobs in the administration and Congress, and a feckless GOP establishment that is just as complicit for the power and money. To me, that's the main difference between then and now: Trump is the talk-radio president, in his style, beliefs, tsunami of lies, everything. His pandering lust for ratings is what our mainstream media has mistaken for populism. His base was primed by decades of the stuff, and now, like Pavlov's dogs, it's pure reflex.
I remember thinking that lots of people with whom I normally agree were suffering from too high an opinion of their fellow-citizens when they thought in 2004 that Bush won by fraud. No, they saw him and what he did, and those are the kinds of things they like.
'Iʼd say "Their taste is in their mouths." except Iʼve seen what they eat.'
I wouldn't put too much stock in Rona Romney's fundraising pitch. The RNC has been bankrupted by Trump--literally bankrupted. Trump's campaign wildly overspent in the dumbest of markets (tens of millions of dollars buying ads to run in Washington, DC just so Trump could see them, for example). And so now the RNC has to scramble to just keep the lights on and the doors open.
And there's also the fact that she's adhering to the Great Conservative Dictum: Always Be Grifting. Since Trump's most fanatical followers are 100% on board with "THE ELECTION WUZ STOLEN!!!!!", it's only natural to exploit that for fundraising purposes. Take all their money and use it for other things like paying down campaign debt or paying Trump's legal bills. And maybe making sure that Rona's paycheck clears every two weeks.
A lot of people have pointed out that while Giuliani and other lawyers have been screaming about fraud on twitter and in media appearances, they don’t allege fraud in court – because if they deliberately lie to a judge they can get disciplined and possibly disbarred. But what I find even more ridiculous is how they are pretending for the rubes they can introduce new super-secret “proof” of fraud once they get in front of SCOTUS.
This is getting more and more dangerous, not because Trump will succeed but because Trump will ultimately fail. The absolute best that can be hoped for at this point is that after January 20th the MAGAts will seamlessly turn their hopes to 2024, sort of the way the QAnon shit morphs into something new each time a predicted date for all to be revealed passes by uneventfully. The worst-case scenario is bloodshed.
Couple of bullet points:
•What the modern GOP has offered has been hate and lies and fear. That's because all they have to offer -- an extractive economy for their special interests, a complete disregard for the nation's people, etc., etc., etc.
•Speaking of the GOP, my favorite tool of theirs is the perversion of language. While no system is perfect, to err is human, etc., etc., etc., funky tabulation of ballots is an intrinsic part of the system. Personally, I'm'a going to my grave convinced that Wisconsin in 2016 was rigged. That is, Donnie didn't legitimately win the state, Scott Walker did it for him. Anyway. When the GOP claims the Dems are cheating, I take it as an admission that they're the true cheaters.
•Two pieces that scare the shit out of me, neither of which I can or would argue with:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/opinion/biden-supreme-court.html?searchResultPosition=1
and
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/this-political-theorist-predicted-the-rise-of-trumpism-his-name-was-hunter-s-thompson/
•A factoid maybe: That move to sketchy e-voting has been, I believe, tend to be pushed by the GOP.
•One of the things I ponder more and more: How come elections are so close so often?
•As I'm sure I've ranted, we're not a democracy and not even a republic in any meaningful. American Democracy = Soma. I'd say we're close enough to being a fascist state (of we're not actually one) that the characterization is an operative one. (Actual democracy requires a healthy opposition party, which we haven't had since the 90s at least.)
hah! must respectfully disagree with the sub-hed here, unless you're referring to our camp as the American People. you most definitely can not be too much as an asshole for the 47.2%. otherwise I sign on completely to this newsletter!
Can't say I actually agree with you this time. I think Mencken was right: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the American public. Therefore, you can't be too much of an asshole for the American People.
Look at the down ticket races and the losses in the House. Trump is too tacky and icky for those who are our rulers, but his policies are just OK by them. Combine that with the fact that advertising works, and we have two right wing political parties, and here you are.
As far as 2000 and 2004 I'd argue that the Democrats needed to do more than they did, they didn't need to go the full Trump route, but they needed to try to nail the Republican shenanigans right then. But they chose not to, for comity I guess, to show they were the bigger people. Where did that get them, or for that matter us?
Republican assholes are never going away. After Germany’s disastrous embrace of Nazis, they made Nazis illegal. And they still have Nazis! We have to reverse the changes Republicans have made at state and federal levels that give them minority control. That depends on taking the Senate. It’s a long shot but if McConnell maintains control of the Senate, the Nazis will continue to drive the country toward the oligarchic religio-fascism they’ve been dreaming of since Nixon ripped away the pleasant Eisenhower facade and showed the true face of 20th century Republicanism: bigotry welded to amorality in the pursuit of power.
"a big part of the reason people vote for Democrats in the first place is because they don’t do shit like Republicans do — and that Biden beat Trump mainly because Americans were sick of Trump’s nonsense and wanted to be represented by a non-asshole"
It might not be true, but it's a faith worth living in, and the kind of thing faith can really bring about.
In my ever so humble opinion I think Americans love assholes because most of them are assholes themselves. But that's an unscientific opinion probably based upon my own experiences dealing with my fellow Americans. But a country with the highest incarceration rate in the world that sends folks like this guy -
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/28/us/richard-delisi-marijuana-prison/index.html
- to prison for life tells me that there are a lot of fucking assholes in this country and they're just fine with it.
As long as Red State legs gerrymander themselves to stay in power indefinitely, the Goon Party will remain at least a regional force for the indefinite future. I know of only one state, Virginia, that has flipped from being as Red as can be to being reliably Blue and with their new non-partisan electoral district commission will probably not look back. CO is definitely heading that way too but they may still wobble. Same with NV. The other swing states that flipped this year all have Goon legislatures that aren't going blue anytime soon and so will be vulnerable to the never-ending Goon electoral ratfucking.
These days, on Twitter, when some smart guy (e.g. Todd Starnes) asks, "Do you really mean to say that 80 million people love Biden that much?" it triggers a massive tsunami of replies, all of which say, "No, you idiot. It means that 80 million people hate Trump because he's so hateful." So THAT'S fun.
I don't think the GOP will change, snap out of it, improve, etc. At this point, if you dance with the one which brung ya, they're stuck dancing with the MAGAts, which means they'll need every dirty trick, lie, scam, and "shenanigan" in the book to please their date. Whether this will destroy the party, I don't know. I don't know what that means, actually. Although I can see a situation in which the looniest far-right contingent splits off from the not-that-insane half, as seems to be the inevitable mitosis of radical politics. Which one gets to call itself The Republican Party will be interesting to see.
This was right on the money. As you point out, the main difference between past elections and now could almost be summed up by the Times headline in 2004, "Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried". Gore, Kerry, and Democratic leaders never uttered words like "rigged" or "fraud" or even suggested anything that would undermine the fragile trust in elections. If nothing else, it was considered bad form. Now, it's all top-down lunacy and years of it: from Trump, his band of radical nutjobs in the administration and Congress, and a feckless GOP establishment that is just as complicit for the power and money. To me, that's the main difference between then and now: Trump is the talk-radio president, in his style, beliefs, tsunami of lies, everything. His pandering lust for ratings is what our mainstream media has mistaken for populism. His base was primed by decades of the stuff, and now, like Pavlov's dogs, it's pure reflex.
I remember thinking that lots of people with whom I normally agree were suffering from too high an opinion of their fellow-citizens when they thought in 2004 that Bush won by fraud. No, they saw him and what he did, and those are the kinds of things they like.
'Iʼd say "Their taste is in their mouths." except Iʼve seen what they eat.'