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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34397 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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It seems like Trump is getting his twitter back. The weird thing is I think red tribe doesn’t want him to get twitter back. I don’t. Blue tribe will put up a big fight over it but actually be very happy if he got twitter back. Then they get his tweets to rally against. For now Musks says he’s thinking about it. From a free speech absolutist view he does have to approve it. But I still want him to say no.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593673844996288512?s=46&t=o4yJPOOQnQoAxYXvJuPdlQ

another update from musk https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1594131768298315777

Going to happen, but no mention of when. This is a win for the right, but it will mean an escalation of the culture wars overall. I would possibly prefer an outcome where the culture wars are attenuated even if neither side wins, than a phyric victory in which the wars intensify. When you look at the mental health, interpersonal relationships, or social stability angle, such increased partisanship cannot be good. Still2 more years until the the election, if things seem bad enough already. The election is think is guanteed to be close, like 2016 and 2020.

I never thought I'd see the day

De-escalation happened in the 90s, and all it got people was a few years of a false sense of security. Any amount of escalation is better than a false peace that ends in another walkover because one side forgot the war was happening.

(what could even be next? Abolishing the family? Mass property confiscation? Mandatory "therapy" to root out dissidents? All pretty plausibly on the "list of stuff from the New Republic opinion section that you're crazy for taking seriously until it inevitably happens" at this point.)

It's what's desired. Whether or not people are striving for it is debatable.

Hope is not a plan and neither is nostalgically speaking about the times when people didn't hate each other.

Yeah, a lot of us are pretty blackpilled at this point. However bad we expect things to get, it will probably be worse in some way we haven't thought of yet.

In other words it's lazy and hurts his brand. His Twitter persona precisely fills out the strawman silhouette that his enemies have painted of him.

social media tends to reward behavior that plays to the crowds

Yeah, but what crowds? Ones hostile to him?

Is his comparative advantage lower engagement?

If it was up to the woke he would still be banned from Twitter, they couldn't beat him with rhetoric so they silenced him entirely. Why should he care what they want? Where is the benefit in writing careful, nuanced pieces about the culture war when one side has taken every single thing you have ever said and interpreted it in the least charitable manner possible?

However, Jordan Peterson video edits with C&C gameplay are worth a chuckle.

For example: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Nvckip7qxk

Musk twitter poll on reinstating Trump. 60% Yes at 1.8M votes.

Bold considering some significant fraction of online Trump people have moved to other platforms, Gab, Gettr, .win, Truth, others.

Seems to have evened out a bit more since then, now 52% yes 48 no.

I would do this as a trap to catch bot activity. Alternatively, it would be funny if people came back who claimed they were done with twitter specifically to vote in this poll.

he never said when

I can't believe he actually made a twitter poll and said "Vox populi, vox dei". He has to follow through with whatever the crowd says right? He wouldn't have any credibility left if he backed out after this.

Crucially, he never said when, so who knows. He obviously left that key detail out. I think he will get to it eventually. It's worth noting that other individuals pitched money to buy Twitter, not just Musk, who may not want him unbanned and may have some leverage over Musk.

I think he has to let Trump on even if poll goes negative. Trump has a fairly high probability of being the next Potus. Facebook will let him back on too. A guy like that can’t be banned.

Why not?

No, seriously, what's so important about Twitter/FB that the POTUS needs to be on it? It exists to make people feel more "in the loop." For normies that's mostly an illusion. For the most powerful man on Earth, it's definitely an illusion, plus some level of ego trip. Doesn't strike me as worth pursuing.

It’s the town square. You can’t have major political figures being banned from walking down Main Street and talking to voters.

A court has ruled that POTUS cannot block journalists from his private account, so if access to POTUS' tweets is some sort of fundamental right, I don't see why that right should not apply to all private citizens.

No, the court ruled that because Trump used his Twitter account to conduct government business, and because it was open to general discourse by the public, it was a designated public forum. The court said:

the First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise-open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees

Since Trump is no longer a govt official, his account is no longer a designated public forum, even if he uses it for his campaign. Campbell v. Reisch, 986 F. 3d 822 (8th Cir. 2021).

If you're going to say "no" you probably should say something that contradicts me. When Trump was banned he was still POTUS, and we are discussing a scenario when he's POTUS again.

We are talking about whether he should be restored now, are we not?

And, btw, your premise ("if access to POTUS' tweets is some sort of fundamental right") is completely wrong; the constitutional question is not about access to tweets; it is whether a govt social media account can engage in viewpoint discrimination. The case was about the right to speak, not about the right to access information.

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Does he have credibility left to lose after weeks of own-goals?

What own goals? Firing / getting people to quit when he needs to cut staff by about 80-90%?

How many of those people were providing value in excess of cost?

The platform still works, and if he is to be believed daily active users are up, so I would say yes.

If the result doesn't come out how he wants, he'll rig it or change it and cry "bots".

Does Musk have a pattern of behavior of this sort of thing?

I don't think Trump will come back. He's said as much, and I believe him.

That would certainly be the best outcome. He no longer has the status of being banned, but still doesn't have the reach of Twitter.

I wonder how much he is being paid to stay on Truth Social.

I'm not sure Trump saying something is very good evidence it's true.

Man, I have such mixed feelings about this.

I really want Trump to get out of the fucking way. He had his shot at being the hero of the populist right, he failed comprehensively. Somehow his enemies were stronger than ever after his tenure, with an even tighter grip on the culture, the levers of power, and the minds of our youth than ever before. His entire presidency was the perfect examples of one step forward, two steps back. He simply was not the guy.

Is Desantis the guy? 70% chance he's not in my estimation. But I'm willing to give him a shot.

I'd heard some talk that after so many Trump backed candidates ate dirt in the midterms, and Desantis fucking cleaned house, that meant America was "over" Trump. But that doesn't necessarily mean he'd lose a Republican Primary. Especially not with a crowded field, and a 30% cut of the base that's ride or die for him. Republicans will have to pull the same shit the DNC pulled on Bernie, and keep some Trump adjacent candidate in the race to try to split his base, while every other nominee falls in line and endorses someone else chosen behind closed doors.

With my luck, Desantis will be the Trump adjacent candidate they use to split the base, and fucking Jeb Bush will be the anointed insider candidate.

Anyways, Trump getting back on twitter is step 1 to growing his reach again. Right now he's so marginalized only that ride or die portion really gets his messages anymore. He doesn't go viral. Barely anybody even knows what he's saying anymore, beyond second hand accounts of his "melt downs" on Truth Social. My only hope is that he has too much pride to come slinking back to Twitter without Elon issuing a personal apology for the terrible way Twitter treated him, and begging him on his hands and knees to please grace Twitter with his genius and insight again. I guess I have to further hope Elon doesn't then go and do just that.

As much as I'm a free speech guy, and thought his banning was patently ridiculous, now that he's gone, I wish he'd just stay gone. But it's looking like he's going to take the RNC down with him every bit as much as Clinton took the DNC down with her in 2016.

I really want Trump to get out of the fucking way. He had his shot at being the hero of the populist right, he failed comprehensively. Somehow his enemies were stronger than ever after his tenure, with an even tighter grip on the culture, the levers of power, and the minds of our youth than ever before. His entire presidency was the perfect examples of one step forward, two steps back. He simply was not the guy.

I agree that Trump made himself an exceedingly easy target for criticism, but at the same time I'm under the impression that any sufficiently Republican candidate in power is going to be used as a tool by the mainstream in order to further their cultural agenda.

Even if that candidate is 100% clean and somehow never does or says anything wrong, they're going to use whatever they can construe as even slightly objectionable to rub shit in the Republican party's face. The policies and legislative changes that politician enacts which goes against the mainstream are going to be painted in an unduly negative light, and any dirt they'll find will persist in the news cycle for as long as they need - regardless of if there's any basis to the claim or not. As far as I know they're still doubling down on the claim that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election, despite that having been thoroughly discredited multiple times.

All of this is to say that I don't think The Guy exists, not as long as the flow of information is so heavily controlled by certain interest groups. The information they'll hear from the very outset is going to be almost entirely negative, and first impressions stick. Eventually, that dislike becomes crystallised, and it's very hard to subsequently change people's minds.

I remember the media trying to make Romney’s dog-transportation and making less use of tax loopholes than average into major scandals, so I can’t say you’re totally wrong, but let’s remember that trump legitimately does have a lot more scandals to his name than Desantis or Pompeo.

but let’s remember that trump legitimately does have a lot more scandals to his name than Desantis or Pompeo.

Oh I don't disagree with that and never stated otherwise. I was just piggybacking off WhiningCoil's comment to state that I'm extremely doubtful that there is a Republican candidate out there which the mainstream media wouldn't make into a political weapon.

Perhaps this is too pessimistic, but I'm of the opinion that no real sweeping changes are possible as long as one political group continues to have such a stranglehold on media (and academia too) - the threat of "Deviate from accepted behaviour and we'll character assassinate you" is a very powerful sanction to impose on a public figure. It's for this reason that I'm far more interested in changing the informational environment than I am in playing party politics.

I really want Trump to get out of the fucking way. He had his shot at being the hero of the populist right, he failed comprehensively. Somehow his enemies were stronger than ever after his tenure, with an even tighter grip on the culture, the levers of power, and the minds of our youth than ever before. His entire presidency was the perfect examples of one step forward, two steps back. He simply was not the guy.

He appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term and others. I would not call that a failure. Did other stuff too. Did he make the left worse? Possible, but correlation not causation. Of course, this was not contingent on Trump per say.

Is Desantis the guy? 70% chance he's not in my estimation. But I'm willing to give him a shot.

He seems even more of an 'establishment guy' than Trump.

My only hope is that he has too much pride to come slinking back to Twitter without Elon issuing a personal apology for the terrible way Twitter treated him, and begging him on his hands and knees to please grace Twitter with his genius and insight again. I guess I have to further hope Elon doesn't then go and do just that.

Why would he ask or expect an apology when both he and Elon know it was the old management who banned him.

He appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term

That's congress's doing, not Trump's. All he did was sit in the chair. Any old stooge could have done that, and for less!

That's congress's doing, not Trump's

No it is not, The president nominates the Senate approves or disapproves, and whatever else, Trump's efforts on behalf of the cause go a bit deeper than just 3 SCOTUS Justices.

That's congress's doing, not Trump's. All he did was sit in the chair. Any old stooge could have done that, and for less!

hence I wrote, "Of course, this was not contingent on Trump per say."

What do you mean? The president does nominate the person.

Right but any conservative president would have done the same. It's congress that made sure he got to nominate three instead of two.

any other "conservative president" would have lost in 2016 making this whole point moot anyway

"if only Trump didn't have X, Y, Z, and was A, B,C, he would be great" or "he just did stuff another GOP person would have done" counterfactuals as reasons to discount things he did or put space between things you like and things you don't like aren't strong arguments because other "conservative" president or GOP nominee would have lost in 2016 and the US would have been in the 2nd term

you would prefer a nicer, polished Trump? you think another guy in his place woulda done something he did you like anyway? okay, well that guy would have lost and it would be the 2nd term of Hillary Clinton right now

any other "conservative president" would have lost in 2016 making this whole point moot anyway

I disagree. If Trump hadn't run, we could have ended up with a boring normal republican who would have almost certainly won against doomed candidate Hillary Clinton. Of course no candidate in 2016's primary was equipped to deal with his shenanigans or frankly live in the meme economy at all.

you would prefer a nicer, polished Trump?

There are things I wish he'd done differently, even adjusting for our obvious political differences. I wish he'd kept turnover lower and cultivated effective leaders he could delegate to. I wish he'd handled Covid differently rather than deferring to states and letting the CDC go off on adventures. I wish he'd had a more pragmatic plan to deal with China. I wish he'd thought more carefully about his responsibility as a leader to set the stage for future leaders who aren't him.

A boring normal Republican would have been railroaded and lost because he wouldn't fight, just like Mitt Romney did in 2012 and John McCain did in 2008. And just like Mitt Romney was so mediocre the GOP couldn't take the Senate despite maybe the best metrics and seats to do so in decades, a normal Republican would not have won healthy majorities in Congress either.

If you look at the other likely Candidates in the absence of Trump, they would have lost the midwest. If they lost the midwest, they lose the election. Which one do you think would have turned unlikely voters who voted Obama in 2008 and 2012 into GOP voters? Certainly not Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush.

I wish he'd handled Covid differently rather than deferring to states and letting the CDC go off on adventures.

Trump was being impeached at the start of covid. He was regularly being threatened by his own party with removal if he changed the leadership at the CDC. Because of that, what he did was create a parallel group which oversaw stats reporting to stop the CDC from lying about it.

You may wish he did X, Y, or Z, and I certainly do, but we must remember what really happened during the COVID hysteria.

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Trump's polling and performance in the midwest, something which was necessary for the GOP candidate to win, and something with which every other candidate in the heavily contested primary did far worse in

Trump captured just enough Obama voters in the midwest to win. Which of the other likely candidates was going to do that? Not Cruz, not Rubio, not Jeb, not Kasich outside of Ohio. And that's assuming they would have performed as good as Trump did in other states outside of their "native" regions. Trump, alone, was the person pushing polices which most Americans cared about but which the other candidates were doing their best to ignore (immigration and trade being the main ones).

Disagree, other establishment conservative presidents have made worse (especially in retrospect) selections. Remember Harriet Miers?

Isn't that shift a result of the work of the Federalist Society, which basically picked every conservative SC justice after Miers?

Partly, but no they do not pick them. Trump picked them from their recommendations. So far he is the only Republican president to commit to doing so and follow through. It's just too tempting to play patron with them.

And yet Trump managed to not fuck it up where other establishment Republicans have, by wanting to nominate friends of friends or reward political favors.

Nobody is saying that the Senate wasn't involved. They obviously are. @pusher_robot was pointing out that it's untrue to say that Trump wasn't involved, and that it was all Congress' doing.

Trump was given a curated list to pull names from.

Mitch held a seat and Trump did what he was told. The one, huge, unequivocally great thing he did wasn't him, because you have to be delusional at this point to think Trump is good at doing anything but trolling the hell out of the libs.

We're evaluating Trump as a potential "leader of the populist right", and Supreme Court nominations are entirely unrelated to one's competency in that role, as Evinceo notes.

Except to the degree that you can get yourself elected as President, in which case just say that, instead of how he "appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term and others".

We're evaluating Trump as a potential "leader of the populist right", and Supreme Court nominations are entirely unrelated to one's competency in that role,

I disagree.

The alternate explanation is that Trump (and more broadly the Tea Party) accurately identified one of the most significant in terms of attack surfaces in terms of actual damage dealt and flipped it, which is why so0 many blue/grey tribers are now desperate to paint it as a nothing-burger.

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This is why I can’t take the phrase “most important election of our lifetimes” seriously anymore. 2016 was the most important election of our lifetimes, and it’s not even close.

He appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term and others. I would not call that a failure. Did other stuff too. Did he make the left worse? Possible, but correlation not causation. Of course, this was not contingent on Trump per say.

I remember being quite concerned that after 8 years of the administrative state Turbulent Priest-ing Obama's enemies, that another 4 years of Hillary actively cultivating that behavior might spell the end of the republic. Of course, any Republican would probably have been enough to ward off that.

no other republican would have won

Almost any other Republican would have won. Most other Republicans would also have won the popular vote, instead of squeaking through by the skin of their teeth.

just like mitt romney

Mitt Romney didn't run in 2016, so...

and neither did any other Republican

lol

He appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term and others. I would not call that a failure. Did other stuff too.

That was McConnell's victory, not Trump's. Trump wanted people who would be "loyal" to him (he was obsessed about "loyalty" for more than he was concerned with any coherent political philosophy), but his advisors pushed him to trust McConnell. Any Republican president with a heartbeat could have done the same thing.

He seems even more of an 'establishment guy' than Trump.

I wouldn't call Trump "establishment" in any sense, so I agree that Desantis is definitely more establishment than Trump. That said, Trump is a proven failure while Desantis at least has potential.

DeSantis wasn’t very establishment but going against covid. He wasn’t establishment going after LGBT stuff in school. He wasn’t establishment going after Disney.

There exists a Republican Party establishment that still firmly controls about a third of the states in the union. That is what Desantis represents. Everything he does aligns with their agenda.

That is just claiming X without proving X. DeSantis went way out on a limb re covid. He held the line for freedom when many Republicans didn’t. How is that establishment?

except Desantis did lockdown, did enforce mask mandates, did close schools, and a bunch of other covid hysteria

Noem, Abbot, Kemp, and others have similar performance

was Desantis better than your average GOP derp? yeah, but that's not saying much

in order for Desantis to "go way out on a limb re covid" compared to the establishment GOP, the establishment GOP would have to have a stark covid response position

what was that establishment position during the covid hysteria?

Okay Charlie Crist. Florida was the first state of significant population to buck the covid lockdowns. They also did a lot to prevent local municipalities from backdooring the lunacy. If you compare Abbot with DeSantis Florida was faster and more complete in return to normal.

Part of the reason the GOP became more freedom aligned re Covid was because of DeSantis.

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Can you be more specific? What are the policies where you see yourself and Trump in opposition to the GOP establishment and DeSantis?

Are you talking about Paul Ryan style fiscal conservatism, where he'll try to cut social security and medicare so he can cut taxes?

Or do you think he's faking it with his anti-illegal-immigration stance?

desantis is a neocon, his china/trade policy, his removal of confederate statues and history, having more charisma than a wet blanket, being able to win a national election to name a few

Or do you think he's faking it with his anti-illegal-immigration stance?

desantis doesn't have strong "stances," he makes political plays

which is why desantis was a nameless neocon dork during his 6 years in Congress (which is why the GOP essentially handed him a R+9 district), he saw how popular trump was with Republicans, and then has been going with the diet trump act since

if someone was going to attempt to supplant populist trumpism, you would go with a softer, diet trumpism while still maintaining much of the status quo nonsense

this was true when the GOP infiltrated and destroyed the tea party and it is true now

I will take Diet Trumpism with the chance of actually accomplishing anything over current Trumpism that did nothing but tweet for 4 years any day. How hard you might desire to hit doesn't mean anything if you never throw a punch.

Trump needs to go away. He had his chance. As impotent, disorganized, and completely non-insurrection-like in character as it was, he even had a kind of semi-coup (or at least semi-coup energy) available for him to work with in J6 (even if it had failed and he had simply died for it, that would have been a far more noble use of his life than anything he's ever done before or since).

(He also planned the whole thing and knew the date so he could have easily made some better coup preparations.) He chose to be lazy and incompetent, having no real plan other than tweeting as usual, and a coward, telling his followers to go home instead of rocking the system, instead (also as usual).

That's all he's ever been, a lazy coward with a big mouth, and there's no proof he's changed. At least DeSantis, despite his regrettable philosemitism, does things sometimes.

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Trump was willing to appoint conservative culture warriors and give them free reign so long as they were sufficiently loyal to him, personally.

Now sometimes those were clowns, corrupt do-nothings, or both. And a lot of the time he fired competent people for not being loyal enough. But "Mad Dog" Mattis defeated IS, Bill Barr brought back the federal death penalty, Scott Pruitt actually cut environmental regulations, and I doubt any of them would have been allowed to do so by Jeb!, even if they'd been appointed in the first place.

I do agree that had Mitt been elected in 2012, the supreme court would've overturned Roe just the same.

You're giving an awful lot of credit re ISIL to one guy, esp since the timeline is wrong: Wikipedia tells me, "Since 2015, ISIL lost territory in Iraq and Syria, including Tikrit in March and April 2015,[109] Baiji in October,[110] Sinjar in November 2015,[111][112] Ramadi in December 2015,[113] Fallujah in June 2016[114] and Palmyra in March 2017." So, they were on the way to defeat long before Mattis came along.

That's probably true.

Even if Trump loses the primary, I don’t think his ego will allow him to not run as an independent. It’s looking like he either wins the primary or nukes the winner’s chances of taking the general by splitting the vote.

So… four more years of a Democrat in charge of the White House or four years of him playing the perfect boogeyman to the left while failing to get anything meaningful done*.

I can accept that in a lot of ways, he was genuinely sabotaged by lawfare and trumped up criminal charges that made it difficult to keep competent staffers. But if there’s someone who can fight back against that, it’s not him.

Trump opened a lot of doors, but I wish he were capable of stepping aside and letter more competent people build on that, rather than forcing it to live (and die) with him. But that’s his whole thing, isn’t it? He does not back down on stuff like this. It’s his biggest strength, but also the biggest weakness of a political movement that is tied to him.

*To be fair, if you were motivated by Roe v Wade, he really did deliver on this.

If he loses in the primary, would he really want to run a general election he knows he will lose?

Trump is almost certain to have better/more competent appointments this time around, I have to say. The Abbott admin's continuing legal victories are mostly staffed by people who plan on being appointed by Trump(and considering Abbott is likely Trump's favorite governor, I'd say they have a pretty good shot of getting those appointments), to name one example.

4D chess move would be for the RNC to put up some wacko like Marjorie Taylor Greene to siphon off Trump votes. If they played it right, they could even get Democrats to donate to her campaign.

why is marjorie taylor green a wacko?

Kari Lake, maybe? Nothing better to do, rants about election integrity, not obviously crazy, able to sit to Trump's right?

The tweet before trump mention:

New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.

Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.

You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.

Not clear what that means, other than not being in the spirit of free speech.

I take it to mean users can set their filters to any level and stuff that would be removed today will remain but be hidden if it's below a users filter level.

Essentially like if you set a filter here to minimize comments that were below some score threshold, perhaps also with subject tags (so one could hide even high scoring tweets with a gore or spam tags, while allowing tweets tagged with profanity to a lower threshold or with no threshold at all).

it means ghosted , shadowbanned

It's just that one specific tweet, not your entire account.

Probably, but to elaborate - the relationship between musk's one-off tweets and implemented twitter changes has been pretty random, and esp with the blue rollback and his general odd decisions idk what'll happen really.

My understanding is Trump has a multiyear exclusive deal with Truth Social so whether he gets his account back or not won't matter much for the near future.

I want Trump to have his twitter back because I like jokes, and Trump is a very funny man.

It seems conceivable that letting him back on after the midterms might work to Republicans' ultimate advantage. It feels like the electorate has turned against insane clown shows, so Trump putting on his insane clown show might actually move the primary toward DeSantis, and render hollow further attempts by the Democrats to pin Trump to the modern GOP.

But if I had my druthers, he'd stay off -- or better yet, die peacefully in his sleep from natural causes.

why is Desantis winning a primary to the Republicans' "ultimate advantage"?

it would be the destruction of the GOP

How so?

gop gets very few seats without maga support

without maga, the GOP is running campaigns from the 1990s for a voter base which doesn't exist anymore

https://www.themotte.org/post/181/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/32883?context=8#context

Because DeSantis is a better politician: more capable of winning, and more capable through competence and effectiveness in office at growing his political strength and the strength of his party. He has demonstrated this during his time in Florida. Trump has demonstrated the opposite.

Desantis is not funny or cool. The 2016 primary debates were hilarious and will never be topped. Trump is way more entertaining. Who wants some boring unfunny guy

Who wants some boring unfunny guy

::raises hand:: I do

I think we've all seen that while Trump is indeed entertaining, being an entertaining public speaker is not particularly correlated with being an effective administrator in a system largely run by your opponents. I can listen to a podcast to be entertained, I'd rather the Chief Executive be somebody who can effectively break the machine to his will.

Trump claims he now realizes just how much the system is against him and will do better if he gets re-elected. But why didn't he see that 6 months after he took office instead of going through 4 years and losing an election? Why should we believe that he now knows how to do it right? He had his chance and he failed, I'd rather give the job to somebody who has at least some proven experience in running the system the way he wants.

You sure hit the nail on the head. I'm not sure what Trumpists don't seem to get about the fact that throwing a wrench in the system only goes so far, especially now that they've removed the wrench from the works and have it firmly locked up in a cabinet.

Trump's primarily utility, given the uncertainty from the start surrounding his actual administrative skills, has always been as bait to lure more effective politicians into adopting his beneficial positions. The fish (DeSantis) took the bait, but now some people want to throw him back in the water. What gives?

Who wants some boring unfunny guy

Judging by Florida, 60% of the electorate.

There's a whole world out there outside Twitter. They don't care about DeSantis' establishment vibe. They don't think that Trump is funny or cool. They think he's a sad, pathetic, petty, stupid fat old man. Now, I like Trump myself. I think he's a hoot. 'We're going to get tired of all the winning' was funny... in 2016. Now it's funny for the wrong reasons.

the only statewide candidate who got 60% of the vote in Florida was not Ron Desantis

why not nominate her instead?

They don't think that Trump is funny or cool.

what do you base this on? this is the opposite of my experience with the florida gop voters

The electorate this midterm cycle. All of Trump's handpicked made-for-TV clown-car candidates lost to their boring professional opponents, while the GOP's own boring professional politicians did much better.

what was the success rate on a trump endorsements?

did JD Vance lose? that's weird, my bet paid out big on that one, but maybe they mistakenly transferred the money

TBH Trump endorsements were overwhelmingly for uncompetitive races. He was probably the reason the GOP decided to run carpetbaggers, one of whom was a rino and the other of whom had obvious brain damage, in two must-win races, and deserves blame for that.

Absent Trump the GOP almost certainly would've run McCormick in Pennsylvania and probably would have run Jody Hice in Georgia, and probably would have 51 senate seats right now.

Absent Trump the GOP almost certainly would've run McCormick in Pennsylvania and probably would have run Jody Hice in Georgia, and probably would have 51 senate seats right now.

that's an interesting take, what do you base that on?

5 points is a big loss to overcome in the totally legitimate and well-run elections of Pennsylvania. Why do you think McCormick would have overcome that? Other GOP candidates who weren't run by Trump didn't.

edit: It can't be that McCormick was more moderate than Oz. It has to entirely rest on Oz being a carpetbagger. Frankly, I highly doubt an electorate who is willing to send an obviously brain damaged person who struggles to form basic sentences by 5 points would have magically swung for a neocon establishment Bushite like McCormick. Oz did very well with the demo McCormick does well with (college educated whites). Oz did poorly with the working class. Do you think McCormick appeals to the working class? The primary results do not support that.

Because of that, I think if anything McCormick would have done even worse. But to be honest, I don't think candidate quality is the reason why the GOP so underperformed historic trends in specific parts of the country with specific election laws who run elections in similar ways. From what I can tell, the difference between nat'l vote and % of representatives is the worst in a midterm very long time (I stopped looking past a few decades).

TBH Trump endorsements were overwhelmingly for uncompetitive races.

whose endorsements did better?

More comments

DeSantis seems like rebranded Bush/Reagan- Status quo conservatism.

He's been giving every signal that he's serious about illegal immigration, no?

2015-2016 Trump was funny and cool. 2020-2021 Trump was just bitter and angry. The magic is gone. It was a good bit, but it’s played out.

The American voters as a whole, in 2020?

Even if this was possible (it's not absent some sort of disqualification move), Desantis winning the primary against Trump would not only end his political career, but destroy the GOP because Trump could easily run as an independent. How would this be an "ultimate advantage" to the Republican Party?

And if we're going to go into candidate quality which I think is less important than the totally legitimate ballot harvesting schemes put in place across the country, Desantis is still lackluster.

Is there a single state outside of Florida (and even there it's arguable) where Trump doesn't lead Desantis by large margins in favorability? Is Desantis the one "growing his political strength and the strength of his party" in Florida given others in statewide office did even better or is it the tight voting controls and 300,000+ rightwing lockdown refugees moving to the state?

Did you know Desantis was a congressmen for 6 years? You remember what a great politician he was then? What part of his political genius is why he was given an R+9 to R+20 district? What part of his political genius required Donald Trump to drag him to a win by only 30,000 votes in 2018?

The current push by neverTrumpers, establishment GOP derps, and con inc., to fluff up Desantis as a tool against Trump is going to harm Desantis, he will not beat Trump, and even if he did he would lose the national election in hilarious fashion.

Agree to disagree!

neocon desantis who became popular as diet trump being pushed to the forefront by all the worst people in the most manufactured popularity campaign since lex fridman

it will harm desantis, harm trump, and destroy the GOP which is probably good tbh but claiming it would be an "ultimate advantage" is just detached from reality

it's unsurprising you are unwilling to engage in anything resembling a fleshed out argument

it's unsurprising you are unwilling to engage in anything resembling a fleshed out argument

Why is it unsurprising? What are you implying here?

Avoid inserting this kind of sneer into the discussion.

it's unsurprising because the user has written a half-dozen similar low-effort comments making assertions and then refusing to explain them let alone offer support in this thread

you're right, I shouldn't have written that and will avoid it from now on

I used to think he'd die of a Wendys induced heart attack while in office. For narrative reasons, the media would have no idea what to do with it.

Now I think he's going to die doing something genuinely heroic. Like, a Nazi or otherwise right wing terrorist will take an event he's at hostage and he'll get everyone else out saying "it's me you want, The Donald, not the waiters and these bozos" before getting shot. Because they would produce maximum confusion.

His dad lived to his 90s only succumbing to Alzheimer's, not something like heart disease or stroke. Trump has good genes for life expectancy, so he may stick around despite being overweight, ,not exercising much, and other risk factors.

Boy you sure have a different mental model of Trump's psyche than I do. I can't think of any public figure more demonstrably willing to throw his loyalists to the wolves for momentary personal advantage. Why do you imagine, under your framework, he didn't pardon the January 6 crowd before Biden was sworn in?

he didn't pardon the January 6 crowd before Biden was sworn in?

to not be impeached, removed, and barred from running again which was the explicit threat made by turtle Mitch?

could he have pardoned individuals not yet indicted? Jan 6th people were being arrested long after he left office.

He could have, yes. If he did, Turtle Mitch was threatening him with a "removal" vote which may bar him from running again. Would that "removal vote" be Constitutional? In my opinion, it would not be but the SCOTUS had already failed spectacularly to defend the constitutional order throughout the entire election.

could he have pardoned individuals not yet indicted?

Yes.

I believe Trump would throw himself on a bomb under the right circumstances. Of course, he would be thinking of how heroic and awesome and beloved he was, and how this would prove the Haters and Losers wrong, and of the yuge monument that would be built to honor his courage (bravest President ever? many are saying so), and probably not thinking about saving people. But Trump is capable of very self-destructive behavior, so long as it's in service of his own ego.

This isn't a model of how trump thinks or acts, I'm just riffing on how the universe seems to always produce max chaos around him. He's the Jungian incarnation of Loki the trickster God.

I want Maxx confusion. I want trump to die pulling trans kids out of a burning building, leave a will with money towards a giant gold pyramid on the mall, and no one will know what to do.

Consider the 1/6 stuff. If he had clearly said he supported the shaman dude in overthrowing the us government, he'd either be president for life or dead. If he'd clearly repudiated them and their election theories we'd be done with it. He did neither.

It's gonna be crazy if he does return. Imagine the intensity of twitter but multiplied by 5 or something. The increased engagement will almost certainly be good for elon's investment though. More ad $ even if some advertisers quit.

Equally important is the financial angle. Does Twitter make more money with Trump back?

My guess is yes.

Now, Trump may not return right away given Truth Social, but if he's serious about 2024, he'll be back for the far larger platform.

They will get more engagement if Trump is there. Whether they'll make more money depends on whether advertisers rebel.

Unlike you, I'm not particularly optimistic.

Yeah, according to my ideals he should be let back on, but I am not looking forward to the daily hysteria over whatever crap comes out of his brain.

However, you should probably be more specific about which part of red tribe doesn't want him back on. I believe politicians don't, but the average red triber is going to be thrilled to have him back on there owning the libs. I know there are blue tribers like Matt Yglesias who think his being back on will hurt his (and other Republicans') political chances, but I'm quite skeptical of this. Attention gives him life and energy, and it gives his supporters energy.

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