The election industrial complex needs fed. I'd rather they were up holding their mock debates than out wandering the streets. I have small animals and grandchildren I have to worry about and don't want their kind just milling about looking for trouble.
The mass media can't say no th hyping any and every idiocy they think will attract eyeballs. The silver lining with these debates is that they the wannabes to be as repellent as fPOTUS.
Problem, though, is what if something happens late in the process were 45 can't r-0run -- health or otherwise (hopes+prayers for the obvious one of course)?
Gotta be one of these equally unfit POS, no? So it's great that they're exposed as much as possible.
Excellent Newsletter Roy, I couldn’t agree more. And the phrase “Potemkin debates,” is classic, and on point.
This entire process is nothing more than a spectacle. It makes me pine for the good ole days when the “Young Guns” were the up and comers in the Repulsive Party; ironically, all three would get the comeuppance in due time! Ryan and McCarthy who?????
So let’s look at the the score card:
Vivek: the ultimate Tech-pro on steroids, appears to be auditioning for a Whitehouse internship; good luck with that.
Haley: while the press needs their flavor of the week, only the “dumb” money is actually placing a bet on her. She’s evolved from immigrant, to Governor, to UN Ambassador, to NewsMax, where she’ll be put out to pasture as its highly prized political consultant; disseminating right-wing talking points to an audience of.....what’s their audience 1,000? Good riddance.
Christie: Trump’s first legitimate endorsement in 2015. He’s the epitome of “Mr. Bridgegate goes to Washington.” Like Trump, just another narcissistic blowhard in search of an identity. Perhaps the Wizard of Oz could remake his reputation; or not!
DeSatan: Trump on crack. Thank god, he won’t be doing to America what he’s managed to do to Florida; truly infesting the state with swamp creatures; on offense to actual alligators. Good riddance!
And to the rest of the field of candidates: whoever you are; RIP!...:)
Yesterday I mentioned Trump’s Christmas Day screed, and said how alarming it was that tens of millions of people would read it and think “yep, he’s our guy.” And Trump’s lead against any and all other candidates for the nomination just drives home that alarm.
We know the GOP has gone full fascist so basically anyone they would nominate would further the same racism, misogyny, homo/transphobia, and rampant capitalist corruption that Trump would and that GOP voters apparently want. So as Roy says, their voters want the alpha asshole, or more precisely they want the totally deranged motherfucker who won’t just repress the “enemy” but will rip the enemy apart with wild animals. They want bread and circuses. To me, that says something more terrifying about the GOP electorate than the fact they are “merely” fascists.
Not to mention it isn’t 2016, so you’d think more GOP voters would have caught on that when leopards have an insatiable appetite for faces, they often don’t ask to see your voter registration card before they bite.
As worthless as they’ve proven to be, polls show that if Trump is convicted of a criminal offense, enough Republicans say they won’t vote for him that Biden will win. Setting aside the fact that said Republican voters are probably lying in an attempt to prove they haven’t entirely deep/sixed their moral compass, the second tier party leaders (anyone not Trump) need a backup candidate. Of course, their plan will fail because the one thing we know about Trump is that he won’t back down. They’d have to assassinate him and none of them have the courage or means to do that (they’d try to blame Biden, of course, but someone involved would post their involvement on Xitter). Bottom line, any living Donald Trump - convicted, incarcerated, stroked out on a ventilator - will be their candidate with a 50% chance of winning.
Elaborate self-humiliation ritual is right. A reminder: this is the Very Serious political party that literally didn’t even produce a platform for the last election. (And no, “Whatever Trump Says” does not qualify as a platform.) Weirdly, this hollow, poo-flinging farce of a primary actually has more substance—in the way rice cakes have more substance than empty air.
It keeps the election in the "news." It's advertising for the books and teevee appearances these shitheels will be selling, and it makes the boss look powerful. Some of these people don't even mind the humiliation, or have locked their consciousness away from the facts on the ground. They aren't even presidential candidates; they are organizations of people siphoning and shifting money around with one weirdo at the top as their MacGuffin.
I think each and every one of them (OK, maybe not Chris Cristie) really does believe they can win, they're just that delusional, plus each one is surrounded by an army of hangers-on who don't want the gravy train to end: "You got this, boss! With your winning smile and my brilliant meme-making, we're goin' right to the top!" [cue Ros Russell singing "Everything's Comin' Up Roses"]
Another term for "Potemkin debates" might be "election theater." It's cheap programming for the networks, and they get to posture to the public (and themselves) that they're serving the public good. The Party gets to pretend to respect democracy while advertising itself on national tv. The candidates get to reap whatever ego gratification drove them into Republican politics in the first place (God knows it wasn't to make anyone's life better). And the audience--to the extent there is one--gets to watch the clowns bash each other with salamis, thus demonstrating how cool and manly Trump is for not being part of it. Everybody (except the country) wins!
For all the trouble it costs them it’s still an easy superficial way to look like a normal party from before. I guess that and the candidates’ motivations are enough. Also they don’t seem to think they can stop now, but I’m not sure why.
Dec 27, 2023·edited Dec 27, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
Since I’ve read far too many political thrillers, I always imagine a shadowy cabal led by a cultured but ruthless mega-billionaire living in a Virginia country palace fronted by a big circular driveway, pulling the strings of a scheming WH insider, or a compromised senator, or an amoral CIA director or a disillusioned general, or a combination of the above.
For whatever reasons—which, just like we’re wondering why the pretence of this primary race, the convoluted plots of these books don’t always make clear—the present horror of Trump coming back as president and doubling down on his destruction of democracy somehow suits the aims of these ultra-powerful actors. A long game is always implied in these books. Maybe all these pretenders are a necessary distraction or Plan B.
Some of the usual plot elements already exist. A big shocking public event (Jan. 6), classified documents gone astray (check), a complicit media (of course), foreign involvement (hello, Vlad). All we need is a suitcase nuke or a bioweapon.
There are always variations in how the narrative plays out, but these stories almost always feature a lone hero, someone with impossible fighting skills whose friend or family members were killed in the early stages of the plot, and a plucky band of sidekicks, who see what no one else can see and decide on a course of righteous justice.
After a few action-packed set-piece battles, as the protagonist fights his or her way through each layer of the conspiracy, there’s a final face to face confrontation with the rich asshole at the very top, who dismisses our hero as a puny sentimentalist and begins a long unhinged rant about how everything has gone to shit so something needs to be done, which always includes the phrase, “Look around you!”, before he gets a bullet to the forehead.
Then the fever breaks. Peace and order are restored and all is made right in the nation’s politics. Which is why you only find these books listed under “Fiction”.
And why is Trump so far ahead? Years of trying to figure out what the fuck is going on in the brain-pan of the average American voter tells me you should never attribute to conscious thought that which can be explained by mere inertia. Trump is in the lead because he's the only guy everybody's voted for before (two, maybe even three times!) End of explanation. When someone has Corn Flakes for breakfast every morning, sure, it's possible they conducted some comprehensive taste-test of all available breakfast cereals, or may it's just that Corn Flakes is what mom put in front of them?
It's worth a pause to think about how unusual this is: A former President in a competitive primary. Usually it's a one-term President seeking a second term and the primary's not competitive (like with the Dems and Biden) or the former President has already served two terms and can't run again, or if it's a former President who lost his try at re-election, they've always had the decency to fade into the woodwork, because it's understood that the party's better off trying someone new. Why didn't Jimmy Carter run in 1984? Why didn't George W. Bush run in 1996? Not like the candidates their parties came up with were so great (Walter Mondale and Bob Dole?) but Carter and Bush weren't cursed with an insatiable desire for attention (and an insatiable need for money) and they really did care about seeing their party move on to someone who might win. Just another example of Trump's deeply abnormal behavior being accepted as normal.
All sorts of things could happen to remove Trump that would make the whole show relevant. With Trump gone, those vying for the nomination now would have at least some leg up compared to people who enter only after the event.
Trump could drop dead. At his age that's not amazingly unlikely.
He could lose interest. He could cross the line into word and deed so bizarre that even the faithful recoil. I mention these two under the same heading because he is, after all, quite demented. That's been clear since he blew his alibi over firing Comey talking to Lester Holt with the cameras rolling
He could cut a plea deal that gets him out of jail time in exchange for not running
SCOTUS could decide to take away his ability to run. If they want to do that all they need is the one shot at it that's already lined up for them in the form of the 14.3 thing.
I don't think anyone could give reliable odds on any of these possibilities, but I don't think that any of them are amazingly unlikely. I left out all the possibilities that actually are proven to be ridiculous, such as the idea that R party elders and insiders might combine to deny him the nomination.
It's their party and they'll fraud if they want to
The election industrial complex needs fed. I'd rather they were up holding their mock debates than out wandering the streets. I have small animals and grandchildren I have to worry about and don't want their kind just milling about looking for trouble.
The mass media can't say no th hyping any and every idiocy they think will attract eyeballs. The silver lining with these debates is that they the wannabes to be as repellent as fPOTUS.
Problem, though, is what if something happens late in the process were 45 can't r-0run -- health or otherwise (hopes+prayers for the obvious one of course)?
Gotta be one of these equally unfit POS, no? So it's great that they're exposed as much as possible.
Excellent Newsletter Roy, I couldn’t agree more. And the phrase “Potemkin debates,” is classic, and on point.
This entire process is nothing more than a spectacle. It makes me pine for the good ole days when the “Young Guns” were the up and comers in the Repulsive Party; ironically, all three would get the comeuppance in due time! Ryan and McCarthy who?????
So let’s look at the the score card:
Vivek: the ultimate Tech-pro on steroids, appears to be auditioning for a Whitehouse internship; good luck with that.
Haley: while the press needs their flavor of the week, only the “dumb” money is actually placing a bet on her. She’s evolved from immigrant, to Governor, to UN Ambassador, to NewsMax, where she’ll be put out to pasture as its highly prized political consultant; disseminating right-wing talking points to an audience of.....what’s their audience 1,000? Good riddance.
Christie: Trump’s first legitimate endorsement in 2015. He’s the epitome of “Mr. Bridgegate goes to Washington.” Like Trump, just another narcissistic blowhard in search of an identity. Perhaps the Wizard of Oz could remake his reputation; or not!
DeSatan: Trump on crack. Thank god, he won’t be doing to America what he’s managed to do to Florida; truly infesting the state with swamp creatures; on offense to actual alligators. Good riddance!
And to the rest of the field of candidates: whoever you are; RIP!...:)
Yesterday I mentioned Trump’s Christmas Day screed, and said how alarming it was that tens of millions of people would read it and think “yep, he’s our guy.” And Trump’s lead against any and all other candidates for the nomination just drives home that alarm.
We know the GOP has gone full fascist so basically anyone they would nominate would further the same racism, misogyny, homo/transphobia, and rampant capitalist corruption that Trump would and that GOP voters apparently want. So as Roy says, their voters want the alpha asshole, or more precisely they want the totally deranged motherfucker who won’t just repress the “enemy” but will rip the enemy apart with wild animals. They want bread and circuses. To me, that says something more terrifying about the GOP electorate than the fact they are “merely” fascists.
Not to mention it isn’t 2016, so you’d think more GOP voters would have caught on that when leopards have an insatiable appetite for faces, they often don’t ask to see your voter registration card before they bite.
As worthless as they’ve proven to be, polls show that if Trump is convicted of a criminal offense, enough Republicans say they won’t vote for him that Biden will win. Setting aside the fact that said Republican voters are probably lying in an attempt to prove they haven’t entirely deep/sixed their moral compass, the second tier party leaders (anyone not Trump) need a backup candidate. Of course, their plan will fail because the one thing we know about Trump is that he won’t back down. They’d have to assassinate him and none of them have the courage or means to do that (they’d try to blame Biden, of course, but someone involved would post their involvement on Xitter). Bottom line, any living Donald Trump - convicted, incarcerated, stroked out on a ventilator - will be their candidate with a 50% chance of winning.
Elaborate self-humiliation ritual is right. A reminder: this is the Very Serious political party that literally didn’t even produce a platform for the last election. (And no, “Whatever Trump Says” does not qualify as a platform.) Weirdly, this hollow, poo-flinging farce of a primary actually has more substance—in the way rice cakes have more substance than empty air.
It keeps the election in the "news." It's advertising for the books and teevee appearances these shitheels will be selling, and it makes the boss look powerful. Some of these people don't even mind the humiliation, or have locked their consciousness away from the facts on the ground. They aren't even presidential candidates; they are organizations of people siphoning and shifting money around with one weirdo at the top as their MacGuffin.
I think each and every one of them (OK, maybe not Chris Cristie) really does believe they can win, they're just that delusional, plus each one is surrounded by an army of hangers-on who don't want the gravy train to end: "You got this, boss! With your winning smile and my brilliant meme-making, we're goin' right to the top!" [cue Ros Russell singing "Everything's Comin' Up Roses"]
Nikki is SURGING!!!
Another term for "Potemkin debates" might be "election theater." It's cheap programming for the networks, and they get to posture to the public (and themselves) that they're serving the public good. The Party gets to pretend to respect democracy while advertising itself on national tv. The candidates get to reap whatever ego gratification drove them into Republican politics in the first place (God knows it wasn't to make anyone's life better). And the audience--to the extent there is one--gets to watch the clowns bash each other with salamis, thus demonstrating how cool and manly Trump is for not being part of it. Everybody (except the country) wins!
For all the trouble it costs them it’s still an easy superficial way to look like a normal party from before. I guess that and the candidates’ motivations are enough. Also they don’t seem to think they can stop now, but I’m not sure why.
Since I’ve read far too many political thrillers, I always imagine a shadowy cabal led by a cultured but ruthless mega-billionaire living in a Virginia country palace fronted by a big circular driveway, pulling the strings of a scheming WH insider, or a compromised senator, or an amoral CIA director or a disillusioned general, or a combination of the above.
For whatever reasons—which, just like we’re wondering why the pretence of this primary race, the convoluted plots of these books don’t always make clear—the present horror of Trump coming back as president and doubling down on his destruction of democracy somehow suits the aims of these ultra-powerful actors. A long game is always implied in these books. Maybe all these pretenders are a necessary distraction or Plan B.
Some of the usual plot elements already exist. A big shocking public event (Jan. 6), classified documents gone astray (check), a complicit media (of course), foreign involvement (hello, Vlad). All we need is a suitcase nuke or a bioweapon.
There are always variations in how the narrative plays out, but these stories almost always feature a lone hero, someone with impossible fighting skills whose friend or family members were killed in the early stages of the plot, and a plucky band of sidekicks, who see what no one else can see and decide on a course of righteous justice.
After a few action-packed set-piece battles, as the protagonist fights his or her way through each layer of the conspiracy, there’s a final face to face confrontation with the rich asshole at the very top, who dismisses our hero as a puny sentimentalist and begins a long unhinged rant about how everything has gone to shit so something needs to be done, which always includes the phrase, “Look around you!”, before he gets a bullet to the forehead.
Then the fever breaks. Peace and order are restored and all is made right in the nation’s politics. Which is why you only find these books listed under “Fiction”.
And why is Trump so far ahead? Years of trying to figure out what the fuck is going on in the brain-pan of the average American voter tells me you should never attribute to conscious thought that which can be explained by mere inertia. Trump is in the lead because he's the only guy everybody's voted for before (two, maybe even three times!) End of explanation. When someone has Corn Flakes for breakfast every morning, sure, it's possible they conducted some comprehensive taste-test of all available breakfast cereals, or may it's just that Corn Flakes is what mom put in front of them?
It's worth a pause to think about how unusual this is: A former President in a competitive primary. Usually it's a one-term President seeking a second term and the primary's not competitive (like with the Dems and Biden) or the former President has already served two terms and can't run again, or if it's a former President who lost his try at re-election, they've always had the decency to fade into the woodwork, because it's understood that the party's better off trying someone new. Why didn't Jimmy Carter run in 1984? Why didn't George W. Bush run in 1996? Not like the candidates their parties came up with were so great (Walter Mondale and Bob Dole?) but Carter and Bush weren't cursed with an insatiable desire for attention (and an insatiable need for money) and they really did care about seeing their party move on to someone who might win. Just another example of Trump's deeply abnormal behavior being accepted as normal.
All sorts of things could happen to remove Trump that would make the whole show relevant. With Trump gone, those vying for the nomination now would have at least some leg up compared to people who enter only after the event.
Trump could drop dead. At his age that's not amazingly unlikely.
He could lose interest. He could cross the line into word and deed so bizarre that even the faithful recoil. I mention these two under the same heading because he is, after all, quite demented. That's been clear since he blew his alibi over firing Comey talking to Lester Holt with the cameras rolling
He could cut a plea deal that gets him out of jail time in exchange for not running
SCOTUS could decide to take away his ability to run. If they want to do that all they need is the one shot at it that's already lined up for them in the form of the 14.3 thing.
I don't think anyone could give reliable odds on any of these possibilities, but I don't think that any of them are amazingly unlikely. I left out all the possibilities that actually are proven to be ridiculous, such as the idea that R party elders and insiders might combine to deny him the nomination.
I wouldn't discount the effects of fearing for their lives.
No version of"It's a Good Life" has _so_far_ featured a candidates' debate….