Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

weird bc a trump supporter across the street from my mom also committed suicide

Hi rallies next year are going to turn into late period Lenny Bruce shows.

"Suicide." Sure. It's all Hillary's doing.

Jack Smith's deep state hit squad

His rallies next year are going to turn into late period Lenny Bruce shows.

They already are! Or Jello going on about his obscenity trial

we're one vote up

More like 50 million if you believe this rather rosy article (gift link)

https://wapo.st/3pRUPs6

We have often had the discussion that demographics give Democrats false hope. And I don't necessarily wish to rehash that whole Peanuts football discussion.

Nevertheless it is true that 17-year-old people DO keep turning 18. And 80+ year old people DO keep dying.

Accordingly, there IS a possible future that contains a less old, less white, and less Christian electorate. I don't have a lot of certainty that this electorate will make the world better. Merely that it may help a bit.

This long Politico piece touches on similar themes but narrows it to specific places where young voters are making a real difference.

less old, less white, and less Christian electorate

the cities keep growing, and the north dakotas keep shrinking

'Americans need to see Trump as we see him here. We recognise him as a dishonest, untrustworthy, unreliable, tax-dodging imposter’

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2023/jul/21/the-scottish-villagers-who-defied-donald-trump

Xp, Andy, you are right, of course.

But as long as the Electoral College and its close sibling, gerrymandering, exist? Someone in North Dakota still gets something like three to five times more voting power than someone in New Jersey.

That sucks, but the disparity is structural in nature. Hence, it probably should be addressed structurally.

However, a realist would suggest that the required structural solution is unrealistic. So we are where we are.

Someone in North Dakota still gets something like three to five times more voting power than someone in New Jersey.

That's where the Gen Z'ers who can't afford to live in the expensive states moving to the cheap ones comes into play

(Which, if anything, is what I think might be the REAL real motivator behind some of the most hateful social-issues laws being fast-tracked in them.)

Even though Trump won North Dakota 65% to 32% you could take all 235,000 of his voters there and fit them into a suburb outside of an east coast city.

...where they would be miserable and never shut up about it

Nevertheless it is true that 17-year-old people DO keep turning 18. And 80+ year old people DO keep dying.

Unfortunately, by the same token middle-aged people keep getting older and turning more conservative, and so the churn continues.

by the same token middle-aged people keep getting older and turning more conservative, and so the churn continues

This feels less inevitable lately, though, because it was part of a larger process:

reach middle age -> have "good job" -> achieve material comfort/financial security -> turn conservative

Now that those two middle steps are gone for a lot of people, I think the last part is less of a guarantee.

80 year olds were 24 in the Summer of Love.

The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it is on Social Security.

Someone woke up extra catty today!

The DeSanctimonious Polls are crashing because of his stance on Obliterating Social Security and Medicare! Nothing he will ever do is going to change his votes against. Attracting small crowds that leave really early, that's never a good sign! pic.twitter.com/b5mBwvcY4N

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) July 21, 2023

A few xps but: My mother turned 80 a month ago.

She is adamant about NOT being a Baby Boomer (born in 1943, so a "war baby"). Also adamant about having been too old to be a Woodstockian hippie. She's okay with Beatnik and bohemian labels, though.

I am very much not a guardian of generational labels but the sentiments are out there.

My stepmom was a Barry Goldwater supporter, and if not an actual John Birch Society member, that's where she was during the Kennedy years

Now she absolutely despises Trump and his stans, breaks up with friends on FB over it, and claims to be a pagan but I think that just means she just likes gardening a lot

Oh yeah, a lot of 80 year olds are in the category of people who liked the Beatles until they got weird.

To be fair the Beatles did get weird.

Especially the Traveling Wilburys

xp to YMP yeah, that's my mom as well, down to the birth year. She watches MSNBC daily and would sooner vote for a dented can of creamed corn than for Trump, or any other Republican.

My mom hates Trump and tuned out after Rubber Soul so ymmv.

That's super weird, Rubber Soul may be Trump's best record.

My mom prefers Motown, which makes sense, as she grew up near Detroit. The Supremes played at her high school once.

And what is Trump's "New Jersey"

Eric, probably.

I grew up in a home where religion was discussed more than politics. My parents (Missouri Synod Lutheran) cared more about Billy Graham than whoever was president. Imagine my surprise, given how the GOP has completely kowtowed to the religious right, to find that my parents have never voted Republican. They’re 91, loathe Trump, and their views on gay marriage, abortion, and racial issues are quite progressive.

bring it

Fulton county prosecutors prepare racketeering charges in Trump inquiry

Re: Dan

I, who hail from a family that despises organized religion, stupidly attended a (now shuttered!) Missouri-Synod Lutheran middle school, which was my first exposure EVER to people who don’t accept evolutionary biology. I have to say that they weren’t *quite* as antisemitic as the Baptists I later encountered, but goodness do they think that Catholics are all bound for hell

Re: Trump I am reasonably pleased about charges and indictments and lawsuits and such. But it would be really nice to see some muthaflippin _consequences_ falling on his weirdly orange head. I am not impressed by the idea of him being "in legal peril"; as far as I can tell he has been "in legal peril" for half of my life. It keeps not turning into imprisonment and disgrace. It's just more cloudy murk of motions and depositions and procedural decisions and such.

I sometimes wish I could just go to bed for a few months and have someone wake me when Trump is actually, visibly, undeniably suffering.

lol yes re: Catholics!

xp

the fighting between the different Protestant denominations in the 70s/80s Midwest always took a back seat to the claim there are Christians and there are Catholics and those are two distinctly different groups

there are still outliers who haven’t died off but what a different time

My Unitarian grandparents were livid when my father married my mom, a Polish Catholic immigrant, in 1978. Still boggles my mind that people cared about such bullshit.

Wow, I thought all Unitarians were real woo-woo "not all who wander are lost" polyglot types.

Table/Boring: It's complicated! In the 16th century, Unitarianism was a Christian sect with a decently solid base in central and eastern Europe, particularly Translyvania (insert vampire joke here). "Unitarian" mostly meant opposition to the idea of the trinity. In the 18th century this anti-trinitarian theology got some traction in New England. Universalism was a slightly different American Christian sect from the 18th century. But close enough for comfort.

Current Unitarian Universalism dates from 1961 and is famously creedless and "chosen" (as opposed to "imposed"). Yes, there is a strong smell of woo-woo, as Boring notes. A lot of hippies who have lost their birth faith but still like going to church. Expect to see a lot of vegetarian Democrats who wear chunky sweaters and have a wooden canoe and donate to NPR.

But there is still wide variance. Every UU congregation is its own thing. Some are high church, with choirs and God. Others are like a frickin geodesic dome where everybody's an atheist and they only want to talk about Einstein and Emma Goldman.

This is the only religious tradition that fails to completely piss me off 100% of time. Nowadays it only pisses me off 97% if the time. (see above, NPR and canoes)

Wow, I thought all Unitarians were real woo-woo "not all who wander are lost" polyglot types.

p.s. Interestingly, my childhood Unitarian church was the one T.S. Eliot went to (founded by his grandfather; there is still a big mural of his face there). As soon as Eliot (the poet) could, he went for more restriction rather than less. Monarchist, Anglo-Catholic, conservative.

He wrote some good lines but... if I could get that stodgy prick into a time machine, I would take him to his childhood church and rub his nose in the pride flags and the Black Lives Matter signs. Dude needed to loosen up.

we might disagree there, but ymmv

hang on was someone suggesting upthread the white house coke was junior's?

If it was found in the White House I think that makes it the People's Coke.

Don Jr. has been loudly denying that he does coke. Which is a bit odd.

I mean if a cokehead were to deny they do coke I guess they would do it loudly

and sweatily

"Never change your name in the middle of a campaign"

NEW: Potential charges in Trump-Georgia probe, per ppl familiar
— solicitation to commit election fraud
— conspiracy to commit election fraud
— solicitation of a public officer to fail to perform duties
— solicitation to destroy ballots@guardian exclusive https://t.co/8qPQ7usAgU

— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) July 25, 2023