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There’s something infuriating about a protest vote for Trump. Is it supposed to represent anything other than pandering?
What about this is infuriating?
Also: this is an extremely low effort post. Please don’t post like this.
https://www.themotte.org/rules
A protest vote is a signal. Usually “X deserves this more than any of the leading candidates.” But just deserts aren’t really at stake here. Other uses of the protest vote include “Even X would be better than your guys,” which doesn’t fit either.
I’m left with something like brand recognition. Trump’s name is supposed to remind people how hip Gaetz is, even though he has no real connection to the vote. It’s like an applause light: content-free, but not without context. I can’t tell why it’s supposed to be a good thing, just that he expects it to work, and that makes me feel like I’ve been had.
Maybe an interesting comparison is land acknowledgments. They aren’t intended to right a wrong so much enshrine a certain level in the public consciousness. So you get a ceremony-as-advertisement.
Or, hell, the Kanye-Taylor Swift thing from a forgotten era. “Trump has the greatest political career of all time. Of all time!” We get it, Gaetz, you really want Beyoncé to know how you feel.
A protest vote doesn't men X deserves this more than all of you. I want to waste my vote just to say fuck you and fuck your whole system. Voting for Trump is probably the most effective choice to deliver that message of any options available in the last 30 years.
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I’ll second Mr. Deuterium in asking why.
A protest vote is intended as a signal. But I do not understand what is being signaled by this particular gesture. It’s not the traditional “X really deserved this,” or its opponent, “These all suck even more than X.” Just injecting the Donald into an unexpected situation.
Edit: it feels like advertising where I’m not the intended customer. Is this how other people feel about woke super bowl ads??
I read it as a cheeky backdoor response to Trump's ineffective call for support of McCarthy. Boebert was on hannity last night, giving really word-vomity double talk about how she loves Trump, but isn't listening to him on this. The MAGAs are stuck still paying lip service to Trump, but are spotlighting his waning influence.
I thought Gaetz' vote was intended similarly. A subtle, "ah-No Donald, you aren't part of this discussion", without having to suffer the backlash or brand-damage of publicly dissing him.
Maybe I'm totally wrong here, but that's how I initially read it - post-ironic - both a subtle dig and a performative bow to Donald's fading candle.
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Not an American, but I would’ve imagined woke super bowl ads to be an order of magnitude more infuriating.
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"Business as usual is not coming back. Either our concerns get addressed, or we will burn this entire system to the ground."
This isn't burning the system down, this is getting the Democrats elected in 2024.
Personally, I think the organized efforts of the media, big tech, and the federal security apparatus to both conceal truths harmful to democrats and propagate lies harmful to Republicans is probably what, if anything, is going to get the Democrats elected in 2024. Be that as it may, the thing where establishment Republicans get to enjoy the delights of elected office is part of the system in question.
...This is generally where moderates of various stripes claim that such tactics have a cost, disrupting the vital, necessary work of our legislative bodies. A reasonable claim! I'd be interested to hear what clear good that legislative body has accomplished in the last, say, ten years? Twenty? More? Can you make a case for the accomplishments of our august legislative body?
It's kind of weird how that didn't get enough Democrats elected in 2022.
Or 2016.
Or 2014.
Or 2010.
Is it your contention that the current state of affairs, the players involved, their ideological commitments, and the state of the infrastructure employed were identical in 2016, 2014 and 2010 as they are now? If so, I think you are mistaken. Things change. Changes can be observed, and trends noted. Further, is it your understanding that election shenanigans are either utterly decisive, or completely nonexistent? Is it not possible for such interference to simply provide a significant statistical advantage?
In any case, FBI interference in the 2016 election is now a matter of public record. I'm going to take a wild guess and say you probably think it's fine for the federal security services to collude with Twitter, facebook, google, and most major media corporations to manipulate the information available to voters. That's your choice, of course, doubtless made easier by the apparent lack of any downside to such an assertion. Others disagree, but what are they going to do about it?
Not particularly. I just don't think it's enough to win elections all on its own. A bit better distribution of votes and the GOP picks up 10 more House seats (the 10th closest seat last year was NC-13. The Dem won by a tad less than 9,000 votes out of 250,000 cast. Vote distribution across distributions based on turnout differentials and last minute independent swings and the like are a bitch. The Democrats complain about them constantly). Some saner Gubernatorial and Senatorial candidate choices and the GOP probably picks up a few governor's mansions (or refrains from losing them) and a Senate seat or two.
As an example, the AZGOP received more total votes in House elections than the AZDEMS by more than 300,000. While the AZGOP ran two more candidates than the AZDEMS, it was still a larger gross than Katie Hobbs got in the gubernatorial election and just an inch more than Mark Kelly in the Senate election. The AZGOP also swept the vote totals in the state house and senate, (58-42 and 55-45, respectively, although again the AZGOP ran more candidates in both, 8 more -- two of which were independents who got less than 2,000 votes total -- in the state house, and 1 more in the state senate). Same story in PA: the vote gross was heavily weighted toward the PAGOP in both the state and Federal House elections (by 400,000 in the state house and a bit under 300,000 in Federal House elections). While the gross here doesn't total to more than Shapiro or Fetterman got, there was the obvious anchor of Mastriano that wasn't present in AZ (Lake had her problems, but she was a very talented television presence and knows what she's doing when speaking to the public. Mastriano had no media presence at all and didn't speak to any audiences that weren't entirely in the bunker for him), borne out by the fact the PAGOP US House candidates totaled almost 500,000 more votes than Mastriano got.
Same thing in GA, where both the state and Federal House gross vote totals would have won outright, without the need for a runoff. Same in Nevada, even.
People can and do vote for the GOP, they just need good candidates (and some luck with voter distribution, and Dem gerrymandering doesn't help -- while I'm more skeptical of the jump to gerrymandering accusations than most, some places, like NV, are egregious) and they can do well. People just need a reason to think voting GOP is a good idea. Depending on how this all shakes out, this may be turn out to be that idea. If deal that was worked out successfully instills budget discipline without people experiencing major damage to their lives and livelihood, it certainly counts as a reason to me.
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Why?
Because it's an emphatic rejection of the arguments typified by the OP and many others in this thread. It's a refusal to accept the existing system on the terms it demands. Trump is worthless in most ways, but his capacity as a symbol stubbornly remains, despite his own efforts to the contrary. Here, it appears to be used to humiliate the GOP establishment, highlighting their impotence to actually break his dominance over their party. Even, amusingly, when he's siding with the establishment!
It's almost as though Trump's relationship with the Republican base isn't quite as simple as the standard cult of personality claims. Almost as though he served as a schelling point, a coordination mechanism for a pre-existing population interested in something more than blind following.
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There's a small chance that it's some sort of comedic joke, given that Trump endorsed McCarthy. But it's more likely that Gaetz is just a putz; I doubt he expects any of his constituents to take notice of that compared to the rest of this circus.
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