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Since I don't see a thread about the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, what the hell, I guess I'll make one.
I'll probably do a poor job of cataloguing the current state of known facts, but as best I can...
Paul Pelosi's attacker was a guy name David DePape, he appears to have a fairly checkered mental health history, if not homeless, appears to have lived on the edge of homelessness, appears to have social media history that doesn't have zero overlap various right wing issues (apparently concerning Covid), but appears to have a set a life circumstances far outside of the standard Trump supporter. (Is that fair summation of the facts? I hope so, if not, my apologies).
Anyway, more interesting from my viewpoint, Hillary Clinton and Elon Musk exchanged tweets over various theories of the case. With Clinton basically saying this is Trump fault, and Elon linking to an article hypothesizing that DePape might have been a gay escort. Which the NY Times quickly declared misinformation (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/business/musk-tweets-hillary-clinton-pelosi-husband.html), Musk deleted his tweet.
As best I can tell, the gay escort theory at this point is almost entirely based on conjecture.
Here's my question, if the conjecture turns out to be correct, will it come to light? What concatenation of events would keep it from coming to light?
Right now DePape is under arrest for attempted murder, its not apparent to me if he's lawyered up or not yet, I assume at some point he's going to have to go on record establishing a timeline for what he was doing in the 5 or so hours prior to the incident, if he met Paul Pelosi in a gay bar, that seems like something that would be fairly straight forward to corroborate with witnesses, if they arranged a meeting on an app, it would seem that digital corroboration would be pretty straight forward.
Not sure about Paul Pelosi's current ability to speak with police, but I presume they're going to establish a timeline for him as well.
If that is what happened, what would keep if from coming to light? (I anticipate some joke about DePape committing suicide, but, that would obviously drive a fair amount of theorizing were it to happen).
Follow up question, what are the consequences if either story pans out?
Shows how weird and varied people are, especially on the right, maybe even more so than the left. One thing I have observed about many of Trumps young online supporters and the alt-right in 2016-2018 is how few of them fit the traditional conservative mold. They were much more diverse in almost every respect outside of supporting trump. Gavin McInnes, Richard Spencer and Nick Fuentes, it's hard to come up with a more eclectic group of people than that. The idea that your typical anti-vax, conspiratorially-minded, or pro-Trump person is going to be some middle-aged guy with a pickup truck and listens to country music, is an way over-generalization. It may be who you would least expect.
The simplest and most accurate explanation is that "many of Trumps young online supporters and the alt-right in 2016-2018" weren't conservatives. Trump is first and foremost a populist who found the biggest issue that was unrepresented by the elites--systemic non-enforcement of immigration laws--and then broadened his base of support by promising to faithfully represent the interests of traditional conservatives as well (who also had reasons to dislike and distrust the R establishment).
In very general terms, most traditional conservatives are Republicans. The fit is far from perfect, and you can find exceptions near every boundary, but the overlap is substantial and central. You also have the loose group of "Republican-leaning independents" who 1) aren't Republicans, but 2) prefer Republicans to Democrats. Bits of this loose group can be found among centrists, libertarians, far-right fringes, etc.
There were people in 2016 whose top two choices were Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, in either order. From a left vs. right perspective, this makes no sense, but from a populist vs. establishment perspective, it captures rather neatly a broad, eclectic, extremely diverse "group" that felt unrepresented by the elites of both parties, and wanted a disruptive outsider who would shake things up. The populist sentiment won resoundingly in the Republican party primary--the top establishment candidate came in third--and lost in the Democratic party primary.
Well said.
The biggest draw for Trump wasn’t that he was a successful businessman or a social conservative. It was that he actually bothered to promise anything to 40% of the population. The rest of his positions and popularity coalesced around that image.
...this has got me thinking about what’s it would have taken for Trump to run as a Democrat. “Make America Great Again” is an equal-opportunity slogan, and he’d have demolished any of his primary opponents in a general. I suppose all the actors which pushed against Bernie might have found better leverage against Trump, though.
I think Trump has some policy preferences of his own, and they are likely a mix of "more-right" and "more-left" opinions. My guess is that there's a bit of a bias to the right, but not to a great degree--in fact, in terms of personal policy preferences, I suspect that Trump averages out to a right-leaning centrist in an American context, even though that probably sounds crazy to most people.
Also, Trump was always going to present himself as populist/anti-establishment. From that angle, his first hurdle would have been the establishment candidate of the respective parties. As much as many people love to hate Hillary Clinton, she was wildly popular compared to Jeb Bush.
i can agree with the idea of trump being somewhat centrist in his own political leanings but only for social policies. His personal preferences for economic policy and especially taxation are way out of line with the leftist overton window. I can't imagine the guy standing for anything that would mess with his bottom line in any substantial way.
That said, i wouldn't mind if trump had run as a dem, he's good at riling people up and i think he is unprincipled (flexible? creative? choose how charitable this adjective should be) enough to say most stuff democrats would like to hear if that was the most realistic path to power for him. Like you say though, i think clinton vs trump in a dem primary is a way worse matchup than jeb, who trump basically ridiculed off stage.
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