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As someone who likes watching US presidential elections as if they were a sport, this has been by far the most boring election season we've had since I started watching in 2008. Primary season plus the ensuing general election used to guarantee at least a year and a half of interesting coverage, with the primaries in particular being full of drama, ups-and-downs, and upsets.
In 2008 we had Obama vs Hillary, a classic for the ages. The R side wasn't that bad either, with McCain's come-from-behind victory.
In 2012 was the most volatile primary we've had, with the polling frontrunner changing no less than 11 times as Romney's weak lead was tested by Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and Santorum before they all imploded one after another.
In 2016 was the rise of Trump, another classic for the ages. The frontrunner didn't actually change that much, but the sheer ridiculousness of Trump's unprecedented run made it hard to turn your eyes away. Hillary vs Sanders was also somewhat interesting, albeit far less so than Hillary vs Obama 8 years earlier.
In 2020 things were somewhat less interesting with Biden's lead enduring for most of primary. But at least that lead felt tense, like the floor could drop out with a few missteps, which is indeed what happened when Biden lost Iowa and New Hampshire, although it became obvious that he would win after Super Tuesday. This election also featured the worst (best) presidential debate in US history when Biden faced off against Trump for the first time.
By comparison, what does this election season have? Biden is running as an incumbent with no credible challengers. That only leaves the Republican side, which isn't much better. Trump's lead is commanding, and that doesn't show any signs of changing. The most credible threat is DeSantis, but he's been far too timid at attacking Trump. The pitch he should be making is something like "Trump's ideas and energy were great, but he lacked the follow-through to enact lasting change and was easily distracting by people like Kushner". Alternatively, he could have done something like Hanania suggested and challenge Trump to a boxing match. Instead, he's barely attacked Trump at all, creating the bizarre situation where a man is running to be president but refuses to directly tell us why we should prefer him over the frontrunner. In the end, it might not have mattered in any case. Negative partisanship is the driving force in American politics more than anything else, and Trump's ability to make liberals seethe apparently earned him so much goodwill that Republicans will vote for him no matter how many elections he loses.
It seems like Trump isn't going to appear at the Republican debate, which will likely turn the thing into an irrelevant snooze fest. Christie will probably attack Trump and the other candidates will likely rush to his defense, which will only further solidify the current dynamics. At this point the most interesting thing that's happened is Ramaswamy's mini-surge to third place which really shows how boring this whole affair is. Him, Scott, and and maybe Haley are essentially just running to be vice president, while other candidates like Pence, Christie, and the rest are doing the old presidential-campaign-as-glorified-press-conference thing, or have too much of an ego to see they have no shot.
The only thing that could make the current race entertaining is if Biden or Trump randomly drop dead, or if Trump is convicted of sufficiently serious crimes. Those would certainly be shockers, but the ramifications are hard to forecast before they actually happen.
Man, at this point I'm hoping Trump will randomly drop dead.
Well hoping is a strong word. I don't wish anyone dead, I don't think Trump deserves to be dead, I would be horrified and outraged if somebody killed him. It's just that I'm a Republican and I want to win. Trump seems to me to be just about the only Republican running who could possibly lose to Biden. A huge chunk of the country hates the man, and while he has a passionate fanbase a significant section of Republicans are tired of the Donald. I've never voted for a Democrat in my life and I'm not sure I'll vote for Trump if he ends up the nominee (not that I'd vote for Biden, I'd just throw it away on a protest vote for DeSantis or leave it blank). I voted for Trump in 2020 but all the talk of the election being stolen without the goods to back it up has soured me significantly. I want Republicans to win, but you don't rock the boat of democratic legitimacy like that. You could break America that way. I think a lot of Republicans feel the same way.
The way things are going Trump is probably going to be the nominee. And if he is then I think he's more likely to lose than not. The only way I can think of that would change the outcome is if Trump keeled over. It doesn't seem likely though: he may be old, but he's certainly spry. According to the SSA Actuarial Tables a man Trump's age only has a 4.9152% chance of dying in the next twelve months anyway.
It's funny, a few months ago someone said that this election is a simple rock-paper-scissors of Trump > Desantis > Biden > Trump. We'll probably not get to test the Desantis > Biden part, but it certainly seems plausible.
I agree with the main sentiment of your post. I liked the anti-woke bent Trump brought but he was far too scatterbrained and ineffectual to get almost anything done. Now Republicans seem destined to sleepwalk into another defeat since Trump has developed a cult of personality around himself that means he'll be almost impossible to dislodge.
Describing the enthusiasm for Trump as a personality cult I think misses why he's popular.
He's hated as are his supporters by blue tribe. That he's hated by his supporters opponents makes him attractive. The red tribers that hate him get labeled as RINO, uniparty would likely be a better description.
Voting for Trump is the protest vote for those wanting to see the Uniparty burn.
I mean, in the top post I said the following:
"Negative partisanship is the driving force in American politics more than anything else, and Trump's ability to make liberals seethe apparently earned him so much goodwill that Republicans will vote for him no matter how many elections he loses."
This gets at your point. I'd say it's basically a personality cult built around maximizing outgroup hatred.
He was this in 2016, but the landscape has shifted since then. It'd be great to have someone who's against the Uniparty with words on Twitter like Trump was... but also who'd follow through with actual policy actions.
Its not maximizing outgroup hatred. Its establishment hatred.
There are tons of people who switched to supporting Trump who would have backed Ron Paul, or Bernie Sanders despite the three not overlapping in policy at all.
OP said he was worried Trump would "Break America" There are tens of millions who are just voting for whatever they think will make America break.
Lots of Americans would support basically anyone to rule the US as long as the first thing they did was put DC to the sword and Harvard to the torch.
This is a distinction without a difference. Trump's base (and many others!) hates "the establishment"... because they think it's controlled by their outgroup.
Agree on the "many Americans want to put DC to the torch", but that's simply because negative partisanship and media negativity bias creates a picture of a terrible amorphous political class that people love to rage against without concrete proposals for how to make it better.
Put DC to the Sword is a concrete policy proposal, dissolve the Union, destroy the political class, and make America 50 independent states.
Balkanization would be terrible, as it would almost certainly lead to foreign meddling and violence breaking out between states like it was a jumbo-sized Yugoslavia.
No reasonable person thinks this would be a good idea. It's shortsighted toxoplasma in its most extreme form.
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Sometimes I day dream about a politically hyper-competent Trump winning in 2016.
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Yeah. Hell, I don't even mind whatever election fraud bullshit is going on on both sides, as long as there's a kind of...gentleman's agreement to only cheat so much and in certain ways, and it's for the most part kept under the rug so most of the peasants like us think it's mostly legitimate.
Yeah. I think there's dodginess rife but it's likely to just about even out on the aggregate
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This is basically the bike cuck comic except replace “bike” with “election” and “happiness” with “legitimacy”.
I’ll take an actually legitimate election over deep state vs. controlled opposition volume 24, thanks.
The optimal level of bike theft isn't zero, given an environment with bike thieves. Legitimacy is also a continuum, as well...a "candidate" that wins in a 99% landslide isn't exactly stealing an election, he's robbing it at gunpoint along with a bunch of voting booths, election officials, and the whole damn building. The threat of civil unrest or worse - much worse - keeps a lot of politicians "honest". We'd both prefer an actually legit election. But like the bike dude: are we willing to get in a gunfight with the thief over it?
Explain yourself.
Totally eliminating risk generally creates enormous costs that outweigh whatever risk you want to prevent.
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The cost of enforcing zero bike theft is generally higher than allowing a few thefts.
I believe the phrase is "millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute".
I wouldn't go quite that far; there are probably circumstances under which we have to tolerate bike theft because the cost of preventing it is too great. But the tipping point is not "where the cost of preventing it exceeds the cost from losing the bikes".
And the reason for that, of course, is incentives. You pay off one bunch of Libyans, and sooner rather than later every two-bit bunch of pirates who can slap together a boat is going to demanding tribute, and the first bunch will be increasing their demands. It's not quite as simple as never paying the Dane, but you should definitely be biased against it.
And so "given an environment with bike thieves" is an error. The environment will contain more or fewer bike thieves depending on your efforts at enforcement.
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Given that time I had my purse robbed by some little bitch of a thief in a shopping centre, leaving me literally penniless with no way home, I am quite happy to spend more on enforcing zero X theft than just 'allowing' a few harmless 'victimless' thefts.
If Bike Cuck Guy is so happy about being robbed, let the happy thieves take everything he owns down to his last penny, then see how content he is about the level of happiness in the world being greater than the loss. Only someone who can comfortably afford to lose a certain amount of money or goods, which means little to no ill-effect on himself, would express such an attitude.
Maybe St. Francis of Assisi would rejoice in a thief taking the few pence he possessed as being in greater need than he, but those of us who can't afford to laugh off a loss of something that cost a couple of hundred quid (depending on the price of the bike) aren't so saintly and are more vengeful.
Fair enough, but even in the Wild West - where horse thieves were hanged when caught - petty theft was treated differently. During the California Gold Rush, petty thieves were flogged and released.
I don't think I've got the stomach to shoot someone over a bike; I might feel differently if that bike was what stood between me and homelessness...if it was as important to me as a horse was for a cowboy in the Old West. And law enforcement wouldn't throw me in prison for it.
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Are you engaging with what "zero X theft" actually means, though? That's not "vanishingly small number of X thefts," which could possibly be accomplished by scaling up the current enforcement mechanisms by a few factors or a few orders of magnitude. That's zero theft of X, which for purses or bikes would likely mean something like having full coverage surveillance of all public areas (and most private areas) at all times, and furthermore those policemen or security guards would also need full surveillance to prevent corruption, bribery, etc. Of course those people also need surveillance to prevent corruption as well and so on and so forth. On top of all the regular training needed. We'd probably need to commit a substantial majority of our population just to law enforcement. Even after all that, I'm not sure that zero X theft for something like purses or bikes is a likely outcome. It's really difficult to build a truly perfect system with literally zero failures in anything but the most trivial circumstances, and society-wide theft is very far from trivial.
If we call for anything short of that (and possibly even if we do call for all that I described above), that means we are fully admitting that we are completely okay with and accepting of some nonzero level of X theft in our society, even if each and every individual occurrence of such theft is an injustice that we seek to prevent.
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When we increase cop power to the extent that they can enforce 0 purse thefts, are you so certain that this power won't be used to enforce other things you might disagree with?
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Fair.
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A vote for Trump is a vote for such a gunfight. I would not personally shoot the thief stealing my bike only because I would get lawfared to death over it (look at Trump, the analogy gets even better). Though I personally have no issue with the thief being killed or the election fraud enablers being thrown in jail/removed from their posts/pilloried in the town square.
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The legitimacy is legitimately valuable! Even if the election was stolen from you, you gracefully accept defeat unless you have the receipts.
Yeah. Basically, "They cheated me out of it, fair and square". It's a lot like doping in the Tour de France. People weren't pissed at Lance, King of the Dopers, because he doped, they were mad at him for being full of shit about being clean.
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