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The remaining primaries and convention at this point serve as little more than a coronation for the inevitable Trump nomination. It was discussed last week the unlikely circumstances in which Trump is prevented from running. The questions now are:
The likelihood Trump wins? Betting markets put the odds between 40-60%, which is not that useful but is what I would expect. The election will be very close and come down to the usual swing states like in 2020 and 2016. Biden's approval ratings are precariously low for an incumbent, especially given that the Electoral College works to Trump's advantage.
What will a second Trump term be like? My guess is much like his first term. A lot of hollow populist gestures to his base but not much happens. I still don't understand these people who are otherwise centrist or middle-left like Matt Yglesias and Noah Smith, who predict or expect a foreign policy crisis if trump wins , but always fail to articulate what this entails. I guess they have to keep toeing the 'orange man bad' line even though he was not that bad, and the economy and other metrics did well under his presidency (until Covid, which was out of his control anyway). Key alliances were strained much, as commonly feared in 2016-2017. The leadership of allies like Germany and France begrudgingly accepted Trump, and not much else happened.
I can't ascribe this to anything other than not paying attention:
(for just one example I dug up in 20 seconds)
Maybe you agree with these prognostications, maybe you don't. Saying that Trump's critics can't or haven't articulated their positions is just confusing.
"'Orange Man Bad' is the 'Buy index funds' of political commentary.". If historically left-of-center political commentators who have spent the past 8 years criticizing Trump and his policies continue to do so, odds are pretty good that they actually believe it.
If anything, the sudden flurry of "Oh, Trump wasn't that bad"-type statements from figures who previously criticized him reeks of groveling and bet-hedging. Jamie Dimon doesn't have to worry that Biden is going to punish him for making critical statements. Likewise for his many critics within the party who have 'come around'.
If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.
This so isn't happening it is comical. But I accept it as an example of the hysterical detached-from-reality "what-if"ing that some people like to do about Trump and why he will ruin the entire world.
This seems like a willful misreading. Do you think "dominate" means "conquer by force of arms"? Because it's not as if the EU has been putting up vigorous opposition to Russian hegemony absent US spinal prosthetics.
Russia is not going to dominate Europe, force of arms or otherwise. Again, an economy about equal to Italy.
Hydraulic despotism using their oil is their only possible influence on Europe. Push come to shove we'll bomb every oil pipe and free Europe from that addiction.
It's in the process of conquering the second largest country in Europe and would have succeeded if Trump had been president.
It's not so much that Russia is stronger than Europe, it's that it's crazier. Someone willing to fight can dominate a room full of equally strong people who aren't.
Lol wut?
Either Trump is critically destabilizing the region by allowing US sales of advanced Air Defence systems to Poland, publicly entertaining the possibility of Ukraine Joining NATO, and undermining the Russian economy by increasing US energy exports to Europe. Or he's secretly in Putin's pocket. Which one is it?
In either case the Russian military has been revealed as a paper tiger and clearly aint conquering shit. The best they can hope for at this stage is to turn Eastern Europe a desert and call it "peace".
That would be quite the inconsistency, if I'd accused Trump of doing the former.
Given massive US support. And even with that, Ukraine is far from winning.
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Interpreting the war in Ukraine as a sign of Russian strength and capability is quite the contrarian take.
Russia is exhausting itself in a multiyear grinding war against a flat open nation of 35 million people. Their economy is so small that they can't replace much of the expended equipment and weapons. They still might win, either keeping a lot of territory or conquering the whole country.
But, having battled so hard for so long at such a great cost to fight a nation of 35 million people to a standstill, I'm now taking Russia's larger threat to Europe much less seriously. They are willing to fight, but frankly not very capable.
Ukraine is feeling a lot like Winter War II at this point.
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Indeed, but it's not my take: "It's not so much that Russia is stronger than Europe, it's that it's crazier. Someone willing to fight can dominate a room full of equally strong people who aren't."
Russia has shown that it's aggressive. It would have been successful if Trump was president, because Trump is more favourable to Russia/Putin than Ukraine/Zelenskyy. That's why RT etc. likes Trump and dislikes Biden. And I say that as someone who also dislikes Biden.
A flat open nation that has had massive aid from the US. Assuming that sort of assistance, I also have little worries about Russian expansionism, but the question is whether Trump would be true to his word and be less supportive of the Ukrainians etc.
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Why didn't the invasion happen during Trump's presidency then? 4 years should certainly be enough, right?
Other hypothesis is that Russian financial system was not sanctioned proofed back then. Pro-war Russians would not like getting their Visa/Mastercard blocked; Russia built Mir cards since then.
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In 2016-2020, Russia hadn't even prepared for annexing the Donbas, let alone invading Ukraine. Russia also had hopes of reversing Euromaidan. After all, Poroshenko was unpopular, Zelenskyy was an unknown quantity, and Ukraine had performed a similar reversal from West to East after the Orange Revolution in 2005. Invading Ukraine would guarantee that such a reversal would not take place.
By 2022, Russia and its Donbas puppets were militarily, politically, and administratively prepared, while Zelenskyy turned out to be just as much of a problem for them as Poroshenko.
Trump's reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine would have been to cry a few tears for the Ukrainians, praise Putin's savvy and genius, and provide less support for Ukraine than Biden has done, and hope to appease Putin by encouraging Ukraine to cede the territory that Russia wants. We can predict all that, because that's what Trump's position has been on the Russia-Ukraine war.
I am no fan of Biden, but it's irrefutable that Trump is far softer towards Russia than Biden. This is one reason why many people like Trump! Trump's policy towards Russia has always been appease, withdraw, and sincerely pray to the Almighty for the victims of the consequences.
The problem with this take is that by the summer of 2015 Russia had already annexed the Donbass and Crimea in all but name, or have you forgotten all the talk about "friendly green men" from 2014?
The Russians problem seems to be that they drank their own Kool-Aid. They seem to have seriously underestimated the degree of support that Euromaidan enjoyed on the ground in western Ukraine and seemed to genuinely believe that if they landed some paratroopers in Kiev and seized the Rada they'd be welcomed by the populace as liberators rather than with a hail of gunfire and molotov cocktails. That shock of expectation vs reality seems to have set the tone of the war going forward. Ukraine may eventually lose this war but Ukraine losing doesn't necessarily mean a win for Russia.
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Huh? And what further preparations would have been deemed sufficient? Because we're aware of the extent of preparations made before the 2022 intervention, and they turned out to be, well, more or less laughable, at least in the Northern areas of operations for sure. I mean surely the Russian state had at least the same amount of resources and troops available in 2018 or 2019 as well.
Fair enough. That said, this is the same Russian regime that, according to the mainstream interpretation, successfully manipulated the results of the Brexit referendum and US elections of 2016, and colluded with Trump. Surely it was within its means to manipulate Poroshenko or get him replaced by someone more pliable, to let Russian puppets gain positions all over the Ukrainian state apparatus, and to collude with Trump to rob Ukraine of US assistance! And yet Trump did the opposite, by allowing the supply of lethal military aid to Ukraine in 2018, which no other US administration had done before. Something doesn't add up.
I suggest that his position might have something to do with no longer being in power.
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