rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

this is anecdotal but it suggested trump has an appeal beyond his base. and the base is still very un-embarrassed to support him. i go to the jersey shore every once in a while to visit my parents, and there are so many trump flags and blue lives matter signs around. in wealthy towns, too -- belmar, spring lake, etc. the idea that the professional classes in america have rejected him is just not true once you venture a centimeter outside the major metro areas.

they said trump would kill us all but instead he’s only killed a whole bunch of us

treesh you were speaking to a republican

like i don't care what they think they are

that's not a fuking Centrist, treeship.

being a niCe raCist does not make one a Centrist.

I was aCtually speaking reCently about how parts of NJ are as Trumpian as SI and Bay Ridge areas and parts of LI. Like, where was your surprise in this?

not a surprise, just a reminder that there are a lot of people across america who are supporting trump. and it's not always who you would expect.

treesh otm

and this guy's perspective was weird to me because i thought trump -- whose whole strategy is to be as divisive and inflammatory as possible -- would only appeal to people who were in the tank for him. i didn't someone could, like, appreciate what he was doing in a measured way. it seemed preposterous.

the democrats' strategy, with bringing on republicans in the convention etc, was to appeal to people who traditionally were republicans, assuming that "educated suburbanites" would reject trump's vulgarity and bigotry. what i am seeing on the ground, during the brief moments i leave manhattan and/or look up from my phone, suggests this might not be a good gamble. but whatever, they have statisticians and stuff they might know what they're doing

A lot of people do support Trump. Also, the US is a very large country.

he "took his campaign promises seriously" and "followed through on them."

• He did repudiate the Paris Climate Accords.
• He did treat immigrants on the southern border and DACA qualifiers like scum.
• He did his best to eliminate or undermine environmental protections. -* He told his Republican Congress to figure out how to replace the ACA with 'great coverage for everyone at a lower cost' and expressed surprise and disdain when Congress wasn't able to do it.
• He did nominate many dozens of federal judges straight off the Federalist Society list, who, in addition to their wanting to roll back every judicial precedent since FDR, had at least some interest in rejecting Roe v. Wade as part of their agenda.

he didn't mention those things, he spoke of economic growth and renegotiating trade deals. and also removing the mandate in obamacare.

i don't think this person's politics are "in the center." i just think there are a lot of people who might not think of themselves as part of MAGA country but who might vote for trump anyway. and this is honestly the central mystery of his entire presidency. i can't believe that after the way trump conducted himself during covid that people aren't fed up with him.

He made overt racism acceptable again, so “centrist” racists can practice covertly and tsk-tsk the lunatic fringe from the comfort of their deniable xenophobia

He also did a terrible job governing the country and we are embroiled in a series of devastating crises. That’s the piece I’d expect people to reject.

he didn't mention these things

And yet these are promises he made and kept. Then again, Trump made lots of nonsensical and impossible promises in 2016, too. Most prominently, having Mexico pay for the wall, which he claimed "got ten feet higher" roughly 50 times during the campaign, because it won adulation from the crowd. A close search of all his rambling, nearly incoherent, improvised speeches would probably yield quite a few more. Along with his trademark 'three lies for every truth' approach to politics.

"there are a lot of people who might not think of themselves as part of MAGA country but who might vote for trump anyway. and this is honestly the central mystery of his entire presidency"

yes

think soda is right, they don't think of themselves as racist but they are racist

Aimless, no argument from me. Since 2015, I am on record on ilx as a person who deeply despises Trump and everything about the way he operates in business, politics, and life in general.

They at least are willing to excuse racism. I don’t know if they care about race issues as much as they do their stock portfolio though tbh.

But again—that is hardly an excuse

The ‘I dislike Trump but the PC/woke left has gone too far’ crowd hasn’t exactly disappeared.

not so much mystery to MOR trump support. there's the old saying "there's none so blind as he who will not see." Or if you prefer the more modern version (paraphrasing) "it is very hard to understand something, when misunderstanding it is essential to maintaining your wealth and status."

the blindness in the face of all of this is what's dispiriting to me, that people aren't more evolved

i mean, i am really annoyed with all of you'al still stumped by and playing bridge and tossing horseshoes with f'ing trump supporters so whate'er.

lol

i just think there are a lot of people who might not think of themselves as part of MAGA country but who might vote for trump anyway. and this is honestly the central mystery of his entire presidency.

How? It’s just the GOP of the last five decades but uncouth. Most people deep down don’t give a shit about the uncouth part.

The ‘I dislike Trump but the PC/woke left has gone too far’ crowd hasn’t exactly disappeared.

This angle is being pushed a lot, especially over the last few months. Enlightened Centrists

He also did a terrible job governing the country and we are embroiled in a series of devastating crises. That’s the piece I’d expect people to reject.

that's the part that gets me too. if you make less than $10,000,000 a year I find it hard to think of a single thing he's done well - even by his own standards, he's a failure. the only thing he's good at is pissing off leftists and I guess when you have no fucking policy goals whatsoever that's enough

xxp re GOP of the last five decades, that seem right, and hoping that it's becoming more clear to the rest of us that racism is central to all of it

While this is true, the early part of Covid this did filter through to the polling and he was heavily underwater. So people did at one time register that he had handled Covid much worse than the democrats would have done. That perception seems to have changed

Nixon courted southern racists as brazenly as he dared to. Reagan's embrace of racism was only covered by the barest of fig leaves. Bush Sr. ran the notorious Willie Horton ads. When was the centrality of racism in the Republican coalition not plain as day?

right now yes but the civil unrest & protests seem to push the pandemic out of the news. I remember when the George Floyd protests were reaching a fever pitch and you had a few broadcasters going "uh hey guys did anyone notice our COVID numbers are worse than they've ever been? shouldn't that be the big story?"

the civil unrest is worse because of trump. he was encouraging cops to shoot looters before there was widespread looting.

It doesn't look that way to everyone. Even some ILX libs have started to get weird about 'riots.'

xp the racism was plain all along, but glad that people are now finally paying attention

As far as COVID, I don't think "Trump fucked up in March/April/May/etc." is all that strong of a play, since it's not March anymore. People want to know what Biden will do going forward about 14% unemployment and he's a void.

A void? The House passed an new $3 trillion aid package for the unemployed in early August that far exceeded anything the Republicans were willing to contemplate. Biden endorsed it.

"Even some ILX libs have started to get weird about 'riots.'"

admit to being queasy about riots

Such strong leadership, endorsing a bill that he had no part in negotiating or passing.

having your candidate associated with people burning down buildings and destroying private businesses isn't really a good thing imo

Joe Biden is very likely to beat Donald Trump in the electoral college

https://projects.economist.com/us-2020-forecast/president?gclsrc=aw.ds&gclid=CjwKCAjwnK36BRBVEiwAsMT8WD01Z4tnHfdbP8Dj_KSRVoYklUcSD2ualUbh_OB5LVPVg__a4x1FgxoCRlQQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

xps - you said "a void". how is that endorsement a void?

Remember when Trump scrapped a proposal for a national testing program?

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner's team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. "The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy," said the expert.

How is it not a void?

Is he blanketing the airwaves with ads for his plan to rescue the economy (which is part and parcel of a COVID response).

Or is he running on a "Trump suxor" platform?

The claim that he was willing to sacrifice blue states so he could just blame governors hasn’t been proven, but I think it should be investigated. His ambivalence about testing in the critical early months made no sense at all. Testing is the only way you can control a contagious virus.

I’m sorry, but Trump’s response to covid should not be memory-holed. It’s far more significant than “ukraine-gate.”

I think you should investigate that and potentially find out that Trump is a senile, venal monster whose only concern in life is not looking like a loser.