Politics is Stupid

general
2432

So that means he’ll run for president in 2024, right? After all, he will hold a press conference on January 6, 2022 where he’ll probably repeat the old standbys of election fraud, witch hunts, Democrats will destroy everything and how only he can save the country. That will be followed by a rally in Arizona on the 15th. Clearly, he’s gonna run again, right?

At the moment, the legal challenges against him are starting to pile up rapidly. It’s turning into a race of whether criminal charges can be filed against him that will stick versus him delaying enough for Republicans to retake the Senate and/or the House.

Things look pretty good for him if he does run. Historically, whichever party wins the presidential election, the other party wins the mid-term election. That would mean Republicans get it this year.

But Trump is also becoming the single point of failure for the Republican Party. Republican Peter Meijer said on Sunday that Trump still has a grip on them because “there’s no other option right now in the Republican Party, and that’s a sad testament.” Even though it still officially says “Republican” in it’s name, the political party is effectively the Trump Party. He’s the one who decrees whether someone is a true Republican or a RINO. It would take him suddenly being out of the picture before anyone else will risk emerging to take his spot.

Historically, when it’s easier to vote, voters usually choose Democratic candidates. This is something Republicans and even Trump himself have acknowledged. All of the changes to voting laws under the guise of fixing voter fraud or for election integrity and redrawing district boundaries are having the effect of making it harder to vote and/or register to vote. This shrinks the voting base in an attempt to stack the deck towards voting for Republicans. That kind of sounds like having the weight of the government behind him, doesn’t it?

Let’s look at whether he will run again from a Return on Investment perspective. Right now, I see five paths he could take.

  1. He makes it official and actually enters the presidential race with the intent to win.
  2. He announces he’ll run for president and goes through the motions, but bails at the last second.
  3. He waits until the 2022 election to confirm Republicans win enough so they can help make him be president again.
  4. He continues to hint and imply he’ll run for as long as he can before bailing.
  5. He sets aside running for president in favor of getting there through becoming Speaker of the House.

Option 1 means he believes he has so much going for him that he’ll win. The down side is that if he does win, he’s stuck being president again. He didn’t want that before. In 2016, he was counting on winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college vote so he could use being “cheated” out of winning and parlay that into a business venture.

Or maybe this time he does want to be president because he’ll view himself as even more unstoppable and everyone will be cowed even more to avoid his ire. Maybe he’ll follow in the footsteps of Moussolini and become a dictator or pick some other variation like setting up an autocracy.

Another down side is that if he commits to it and loses, then not only does he go down in history as the only U.S. President so far to be impeached twice, he will among the very few presidents that lost a second election. Regardless of how much he protests and claims he was cheated, he will have the stigma of being a two-time loser next to his name. Avoiding that may be more important to him than the possibility of winning.

Option 2 means he goes back to just wanting the fame and money but not the responsibility of being president. He could say in the afternoon of Tuesday, November 5, 2024 something like “I withdraw from the U.S. presidential race.”

The drawback will be the chaos that would descend on the Republican Party and be unleashed by his supporters. “Who got to him? Why is he abandoning us? He promised he would make America great again again, didn’t he?” Would he even care what it did to the Republican Party or if this resulted in a civil war or military coup? Or would he just consider it all part of fleecing the rubes?

Option 3 is kind of a sweet spot. He keeps raising money until he knows which way the wind blows and he can either walk away or else go for it if things look good enough.

If he walks away, drawbacks can include the same as option 2, perhaps at a lower level. Maybe if he gives a convincing enough reason, his followers will accept it and conveniently push aside the fact that they gave him money for effectively no reason at all, other than to feel better about themselves for a while.

Option 4 gives him the opportunity to keep raking in money without making a promise. “So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu. What are you upset about? I never actually said I was running again for president, did I? You just assumed I was.”

This also relies on having a convincing enough reason for his followers to forgive him for bailing. Without that, he basically is going on national TV and giving two middle fingers to all his supporters. Given the fact that they’ve turned on him twice now very quickly when he tried to show any support for the vaccines, they’ll view that as the ultimate betrayal. It’s even got Alex Jones, one of his most vehement supporters, ready to dish the dirt on Trump so everyone can see how “pathetic” he is.

On that note, the second time Trump tried showing support for the vaccines came after President Biden acknowledged that it was the efforts of the “previous administration” that helped get the vaccines going. After Trump heard that, he kind of realized he couldn’t exactly trash talk it any more. But Bill O’Reilly and him admitting they got the booster shot after claiming for so long it was a money-grabbing ploy by the vaccine companies that didn’t sit well with a lot of people.

Option 5 has its roots in the conspiracies of last year where Mike Lindell claimed he would present such overwhelming evidence that Biden and Harris would feel compelled to resign, which opens the door for Trump to become president again. As I pointed out then, it wouldn’t work unless Biden and Harris specifically included words like “I resign and appoint Donald Trump to become president.” If the prez and veep resign, die or whatever, the Speaker of the House is sworn in as president.

The Speaker can be anyone that’s selected for the position, and they can come from anywhere. It could be you, me, your dog or your cat. You don’t have to be elected to Congress first. “Hey, wanna be Speaker?” “Uh, okay.”

The drawback is, in order for Donald Trump to give up running again for the possibility of becoming president through the back door of being Speaker of the House, he would have to trust others. He would have to trust that whichever people became president and vice president would honor whatever agreement they had with him and give up those positions once they were sworn in. He’d have to have something major to hold over them to make them give those offices up.

But even then, could he risk that they still wouldn’t give him the presidency? When he got a routine colonoscopy in 2019, he kept it hidden to avoid being made fun of. But he also did not get anesthetized so that he would not have to sign an order giving Mike Pence temporary presidential powers. He did not trust Pence to give those back if he had them for less than two hours.

Would Trump trust others to give up being president and vice president if he gave up running for president himself in favor of being Speaker? No.

Now, you might look at all this and wonder why wouldn’t Trump just run for president if he would make so many people angry by walking away. The answer lies in a December 8 interview and one of Trump’s favorite stories.

Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt had Trump on his show on the 8th and Hewitt asks him who he thinks the Republican Party will flock to if Trump decides not to run. Trump sidesteps and says, “If I do decide that, I think my base is going to be very angry.” Hewitt responds with, “Well, it will, but they’ll still have to find somebody,” Trump answers, “They will be very angry.” Trump’s stating that if it isn’t him, his followers will be angry.

The story Trump likes is a variation of the Aesop fable “The Farmer and The Snake”. In the original version, a farmer sees a stiff and frozen snake in the cold. He knows it’s dangerous, but he takes pity and warms it up inside his coat. When it revives, the snake bites him. As he dies, the farmer tells others, “Learn from my fate not to take pity on a scoundrel.”

The version Trump likes has a woman that sees a very beautiful snake and is so enamored of its beauty that she brings it in to care for it. You can watch Trump reading it just days after being sworn into office where he unsubtly drives home that Syrian refugees and illegal immigrants are snakes waiting to turn on us, so we have to build a wall to keep them out. He gets to the end where the snake bites the woman and cranks up his dramatic oratory:

“I have saved you, and you’ve bitten me, heavens why? You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die.”
“Oh, shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin. “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”

One type of beauty is charisma. Trump has had a very charismatic appearance for a very long time. When Tanner Foust, Adam Ferrara and Rutledge Wood met Donald Trump in 2012 on the U.S. version of Top Gear for an Apprentice-style selection of supercars, Tanner admitted about ten or more minutes later to be shaking simply by having met Trump, and Rutledge said being fired by Trump was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Perhaps the reason why Trump likes this story so much is because he’s watched time and time again over the years how people ignored their instincts and took him in with business deals and now with being president. Perhaps he was telling everyone back then in 2017 that maybe they should be wary of him, too, all the while knowing the story would play out the same way.

2433

Should we mark the anniversary of every attack on the Capital? How about the ones where people were shot or bombed?

Or just the insurrection and sedition where no one has been charged with insurrection or sedition and several of the planners dropped off the FBI’s most wanted list. Or just the one where everyone is a flight risk and is in solitary confinement with limited medical care?

One of the things I’ve found out over the last year or so is how not unprecedented the actions taken were, only the reactions.

2434

People of colour have been disproportionately suffering this fate within the US prison system for decades, and next to nothing has been done about it, nor has there been much publicity about it. Yet when a bunch of white guys get tossed in jail, suddenly there’s court challenges, prison officials being found in contempt, and politicians storming the facility to get these poor, oppressed “political prisoners” help (and to get their photo- and soundbite-ops).

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2435

Well… yeah! We outta remember all that stuff. In fact, several of them were taught in history class when I was in school. Those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it. Perhaps you don’t recall, but when bombs were set off in the Capitol, it was marked for years after. I would think the fact that there are metal detectors at the entrance would be enough of a signal that we’ve marked the 1951 attack. The fact that we haven’t allowed the British army to attack the Capitol in over 200 years should be a pretty good indication that we commemorate 1814.

Or, perhaps, you just want it forgotten so that it keeps happening. I would prefer not, but that’s just me. You’re welcome to your own opinion.

So, now we don’t allow British platoons to march into Washington, D. C. much less to the Capitol. We have metal detectors at the door so people don’t try shooting up the chambers. I’m pretty sure every nook and cranny of the Capitol are scanned regularly for bombs. And I suspect that from now on when a mob starts scaling the ramparts and some idiot in a Viking helmet goes strolling toward the building, more drastic steps will be taken to stop it. If you think not, try mounting a new riot. I bet you don’t get far. It’s not an unprecedented reaction to attempt to prevent something from happening again. Unprecedented would be to ignore it.

2 Likes
2436

throws tuppence into the Pond

So, I didn’t have two cents but… we watched the Insurrection on live television, it was hilarious. My favourite part was when someone was stroking the velvet rope (and I really hope they were quoting Lisa Simpson) and a security guard came to let them through. That moment was later described by the BBC as the point that “all hell broke loose and Insurgents broke into the building”.

As far as I can tell from the outside, the whole thing was a drummed-up setup, sweeping up people who were ignorant of the plan and then culminating in a giant pile of nothing because nobody took the bait. There was no insurrection because nobody took control of anything from the Government and if you watch the videos most people were stopping to look at the fancy things in display cases … and hump the flag, lots of that too :laughing:

If this was an insurrection, then the time that two lesbians abseiled into the BBC News Studio and took control of the 10 o’clock news for a whopping 23 seconds was a more successful one, by 23 whole seconds!

2437

June 2018.

US Capitol Police arrested 575 people at the protest in the Senate building and charged them a $50 citation for unlawfully demonstrating. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash, and actress Susan Sarandon both tweeted they were arrested.

October 2018

By Thursday afternoon, Capitol Police began arresting hundreds of protesters inside the Hart Senate Office Building who raised their fists and loudly started chanting “Kavanaugh has got to go.” Arrests were made after protesters began sitting down in the building’s atrium, refusing to cooperate with law enforcement.
In all, some 302 protesters were arrested and charged with unlawfully demonstrating in Senate office buildings Thursday, police said.

Or any of the dozens of others of Democrat led protests in the Capitol building and its office blocks… Most of them with Democrat Reps and Senators participating. Let into the building and then let to have their say and eventually arrested and slapped on the wrist.

The event that happened a year ago today was treated both as an event like the others above by some police and as an armed attack by others. The event was somewhere in between. Capitol police proved they could stop a riot when BLM came through, but in this case it almost seemed like a honey trap. This horrific violent mob killed went up against the third largest police force in the US and only 1, maybe 2, people were killed by police.

Violent rioters, uncontrolled mob, yes, idiots, most of them. Insurrection, actually getting anywhere near doing something that would change the election or overthrow the government, no. And that’s why they keep not getting charged with insurrection or sedition. Its assault or more often a version of trespassing. But everyone loves calling it an insurrection.

Justifying the bad treatment of one group by pointing at other groups being treated bad isn’t a good way to prove your point. Besides, most prisons are mixed population and many prisons, like DC that are mostly black have mostly black guards as well.

It will happen again, groups get unauthorized access to the Capitol whenever progressive Congressmen want them to. Weird how that keep happening.

2438

Except that’s not what I’m doing. No one should be denied medical treatment if they need it, ever. My point was that no one seemed to care that this was happening in the prison system until now…

2439

And that’s blatantly untrue. White people are just under half the prison population. A few dozen more don’t change it

2440

No kidding? You’re equating what amounts to a couple 70s sit-ins to what happened last year? There was damage both outside and inside the Capitol. There were over 130 police assaulted. Reporters were assaulted and their equipment destroyed. They smeared their own poop on the walls like a bunch of chimps. You honestly believe those are comparable? I assume you have some sort of cogent point you’re trying to make with this. I’m just having fun trying to figure out what it might be.

I’m having trouble figuring out who you’re classifying as progressive Congressmen from last year. I guess I’m really just confused as to how the violence for January 6 became progressive.

2441

No I’m not, one was a riot… They weren’t 70’s sit ins either.

Frankly, I wish they had repelled them the same way they did the BLM riots. But for some reason the Capitol police and National Guard just weren’t prepared for the riots that the press now say people knew were coming for weeks. But, I firmly believe that this whole deal became political football. If there had been a riot that was squashed we wouldn’t be talking about it any more.

My point is that people that democrats agree with get free access to the capitol apparently on demand. The capitol being invaded is not unusual, and angry crowds filling capitol buildings is not a new thing.

So charge the half of the idiots that were rioting, and fine the other half that were wandering around taking selfies and be done with it. With the amount of video available there is no reason these trials should be taking so long.

Yes, you are confused.

And @CaffeinatedNoms and I are about the closest as we’ve been on just about any subject here.

The current President and Vice President appear to have no idea what is going on or what to do about it and we have spent months talking about the prior one. Trump actually has a chance to win again because Biden has been so bad an awful lot of people are questioning their politics because they voted for him.

2442

Cyber Ninjas, the computer security company that everybody was asking, “Wait, who are these guys and how are they qualified to conduct an election audit?”, announced via text about an hour ago that they are shutting down and everyone has been let go. How did they get to this point? Let’s recap because there’s been a few updates.

Last year, they announced they were done with the audit and would be submitting their first draft shortly. Surprise. There was a delay when three of their employees got COVID one day after being sent a “If you keep obstructing us, we’ll be forced to consider other steps to obtain compliance” letter by the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

They get past that and say they’ll submit the draft on a new day in September. Trump releases a statement at around 11 p.m. Eastern time on what he thinks is the night before, praising the “highly respected auditors” that worked so hard and proved what he was saying all along was true.

Except… Cyber Ninjas turned in their draft about 2-3 hours earlier.

Let’s pause for a moment to look at a hypothetical question I asked back in June:

But let’s say that Logan’s team and/or the CyFIR “team” review the data and no matter how much they want their conclusion to be true, they just can’t say it is. They have to announce that the results of the election are accurate. If that happens, how fast will one or both of the companies be attacked as incompetent, part of the deep state, part of the left-wing conspiracy against Trump, or any other way that can discredit them? How fast will Trump himself turn on them and lead those attacks?

Answer? About eight or nine hours.

Trump wakes up the following morning and learns that Cyber Ninja’s draft stated they removed 261 votes from his count and added 99 to Biden’s. The result is Trump became slightly more of a loser in Arizona than if he hadn’t kept pushing for audits.

Cue Trump attacking the audit and saying that they didn’t look at the “right” data. Before he went to bed, he was all smiles and happy with their work. Now he’s not.

Jump forward a couple of months and the report is finalized and made official. Maricopa County releases a point-by-point breakdown on January 5th, 2022 of problems by Cyber Ninjas, CyFIR and others: 22 misleading claims, 41 inaccurate claims and 13 false claims. Out of 2.1 million ballots, less than 100 were “potentially questionable” . You can download a PDF of their report with it broken down in sixteen sections.

On January 6th, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah imposed a $50,000 daily fine against Cyber Ninjas for not turning over public records used in the audit.

Cyber Ninjas’ response? We’re insolvent, we’ve laid everybody off, including CEO Doug Logan, and can’t afford to sift through our records to find those related to the audit. Judge Hannah points out that turning over its records and letting the Arizona Senate figure out what needs to be released will cost a lot less.

CN’s lawyer, Jack Wilenchik, wants to quit because CN hasn’t paid him. The judge says he can’t until local attorneys are in place to represent CN.

Funny how a company that was being paid a lot more for their work than the Arizona government allocated for the entire audit went from being viable to being insolvent in less than five months. And not only that, it came on the same day a judgment was rendered against them because they still hadn’t turned over required documents. They haven’t been stringing along the mark and are now bailing because they can’t make good on their promises, have they?

2443

You apparently have a very broad definition of riot. As I recall, there weren’t even any injuries, much less any deaths. No damage to the Capitol. No gallows built. If there was any sh@##ing in the halls, it was woefully under reported at the time. Maybe some wrist chafing because there were hundreds of arrests.

So, maybe you’re saying that the January 6 riot actually was authorized. If so, then it wasn’t a riot so much as a very disorderly tour group. You know how little old ladies get when they’re tired.

If not, then how was it progressive? Who were the “progressive Congressmen”? ( your words, my emphasis)

2444

Like I said. You are confused.

The riot happened on Jan 6th. Some of those people were just let in and some were resisted.

The “authorized” protests, were the ones I mentioned in 2018. And the one on the Department of the Interior. And whenever anyone on the left needs a handy mob to disrupt things.

Not to mention 2011 in Wisconsin, the Portland ICE and Federal Courthouse attacks and etc etc… Democracy wasn’t under seige then either.

Maybe I am not being clear enough, and I apologize for that. At best Jan 6th was a protest that got out of control and at worst it was a riot. Insurrection? Nope. Attempted Coup? Nope.

I am trying to be straight and reasonable about this conversation. You have made a couple wrong assumptions about what I said and are continuing to run down that alley getting more and more snarky. I am not playing that game.

I am shelving this conversation until something new happens with it or people bring it up again in a year.

2445

The Prime Minister of Great Boredom and Northern Ire is attempting a draft a law that makes it illegal to criticise… oh yes, the Prime Minister.

The swansong of a failing government.

The funny thing is the us-versus-them mentality isn’t going to work for the next election because the only difference between Labour and the Tories right now is that one is red, one is blue, one has an antisemitism problem, and the other an inbreeding problem.

2446

That’s your opinion, and you’re welcome to it. Mine is somewhat different, and everybody has one. I suspect that none of them are a true representation of the motivations and goals of the participants and instigators.

All I’ve done is expressed what I believe and asked for clarification of what you’ve stated. Sorry if doing that sounds hostile.

2447

Wow, I know free speech isn’t codified there as it is here, but still. I guess it’s a natural outgrowth of carving out language that can’t be used and protecting certain groups from speech, along with “Words are violence”.

Good luck.

2448

I don’t think it’ll pass, a lot of Tory MPs are treating it as their hill to die on — not for freedom of speech of course, but because they want to run against him and if you can’t criticise him then the whole leadership system collapses.

2449

If we’re being honest there are no true progressives in elected office at the federal level. Even folks like AOC and Bernie would be considered barely center-left in any sane country. But what I see a lot of from the right when they get called out for anything is either “but the Dems did X” or “witch hunt”. They say the left needs to be more accountable for their crazies but that works both ways.

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2450

Preach! In an Establishment™ whereupon you must be part of the Establishment™ in order to function within, you cannot act outside what the Establishment™ tells you to do. You cannot by definition be progressive in that environment because you have deliberately abandoned any sense of progressiveness by becoming part of that Establishment™.

TL;DR: the swamp isn’t red and isn’t blue, it’s purple.

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2451

Most of Europe has stricter abortion guidelines, lower minimum wage, less free speech, more racial divides.

Not sure how progressive they really are. Authoritarian, sure.