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More ignorant uninformed questions about the American presidential election!
So - Gaza? Palestine? Palestinians? Israel? Will this affect the Democratic vote, or is this just more journalists trying to spin straw into gold?:
Whatever about Michigan, on a national level is there a bunch of undecided/uncommitted voters who won't vote for Biden in the election (not going to vote for Trump or third party, but not voting as a protest on this one issue)?
If there are, are there enough to make a difference?
Or is it that it doesn't matter, the usual Democrat voters will turn out in enough numbers for a drop off in voting by a single-issue minority not to matter?
Will Gaza even be a live issue by the time the real election finally rolls round?
An election is like a giant Prisoner's Dilemma. A small group's collective decision to cooperate or defect can make all the difference in who wins. The politicians trying to get elected have to convince all their factions to cooperate and not defect. But whoever threatens to defect most convincinfly can hold the whole election hostage. And this is how power is won.
MAGA has proceded to (slowly) take over the Republican party because they are willing to defect. MAGA will vote for Trump, but not anti-Trump. People have decried MAGA for this behavior, calling them "cultlike" and other things. MAGA is blamed for election losses. But, MAGA is winning the Republican Party. And MAGA is growing, so that other factions are finding they can't threaten to defect with the same force that MAGA can.
Never Trump wants to defect from MAGA, and has tried several times to defect. But it turns out they're not really large enough to make much of a difference. They have other powers to compensate, like a lot of influence over the politicians and donors. But without a large voting bloc behind them, those powers are dwindling. MAGA is stronger than ever, and Never Trump is the weakest it's ever been.
The dynamic on the Democrat side is almost the opposite. A strong culture of "Vote Blue No Matter Who" has taken hold, because everybody agrees that a Trump/Republican victory is so bad that nobody wants to risk defecting. The result is that the Democratic base is sidelined and taken for granted. Bernie couldn't win, but neither could his voters shake Democratic politicos hard enough to extract meaningful concessions. The result: the Democratic party of 2024 is largely the same as the Democratic party of 2020, 2016, and 2012.
And Democratic voters seem to like it that way. Joe Biden is winning hundreds of thousands of votes in largely-uncontested primaries, because it seems that the Democratic base is concerned that no onesees defecting as a viable option. It's important that everyone stands firm against Trump.
So, for the Uncommitteds -- they're breaking a big taboo here. By "throwing away" their votes, they are signaling that they would rather throw Michigan to Trump than continue to support Biden without concessions. How serious of a threat is that? Some of these Uncommitted voters are surely already planning to vote for Joe in November; some are not. Negotiating how strong this force really is determines how much the party really needs to concede. The stronger the voters defect, the more the Democrats have to give them.
Of course, it may not be possible for the Democrats to concede enough. Leaning on Israel to stop the war in Gaza might bring Michigan's Uncommitted voters back into the fold, but alienate other voters. It might not be possible for Biden to do what the Uncommitted faction wants. Or Biden and his people may simply be unwilling to. (The story I'm seeing is that the people in the White House already feel that they've done a great deal for Gaza, and if only they could "communicate" this to voters, everything would work itself out.)
My surmise is that the Uncommitted faction right now is not large enough to extract real concessions. The overwhelming sentiment on the Democratic side is that defecting will lose elections, and should be punished. I don't think there will be a large-scale policy shift that will satisfy the voters.
The interesting implication is that, if one faction is already defecting, it becomes possible for other factions to defect. In the original Prisoner's Dilemma, cooperating is always the best move, unless someone defects -- in which case, defecting becomes the best move. Nobody wants to boycott Joe Biden and lose the election. But if there's already a boycott, and Biden is already guaranteed to lose, then defecting is more worthwhile for other groups. "They're getting concessions, but I'm even more important than them, and I deserve concessions too." And maybe, in this scenario, the Democratic party actually starts to move in the direction of its would-be populist base.
At the present moment, however, I don't think this is very likely.
Ironically, MAGAs aren't getting much of anything out of it, Trump didn't have to do anything for them because he has their vote anyway. For example, left a bunch of his most ardent supporters who participated in J6 to democrat mercy while pardoning scammers and rappers. He pushed for gun control, First Step criminal release and Platinum plan reparations, because what are anyone unhappy with that on the right going to do, vote for Biden?
Compare Trump to any non-Trump or pre-Trump politician: illegal immigration as top priority, new trade deals and reshoring manufacturing, no new entanglements or foreign wars. These were the big three planks of Trump's 2016 run. Alternatives to Trump included: Jeb Bush saying illegal immigrants came to the US as an act of love; Marco Rubio having tried comprehensive immigration reform; Ted Cruz supporting an expansion for H1-B visas; etc. etc.
MAGA has been quite satisfied with Trump, which is why they keep voting for him.
For your criticisms, I'm not sure MAGA cares. You seem to be describing the criticisms of some other group. "Platinum Plan" was seen by most people as empty marketing, and nobody anywhere cared about it. (It is definitely not akin to reparations.) "Gun control" is also not very compelling when I presume you're really just referring to bump stocks.
He started arming Ukraine and bombed Syria.
He made a lot of noise and got US hit by retaliatory tariffs, haven't achieved much benefit AFAIK.
That was supposed to be funds earmarked for blacks only, call that whatever you like.
It wasn't just bump stocks, he pushed for red flag laws ("take the guns first, go through due process later").
America was already entangled in Ukraine.
America was already entangled in Syria.
I could go on. I made my point, and you're not really disputing it. MAGA is quite happy with Trump, and that's why they vote for him. You, for your reasons, are not. That's fine man
They shouldn't be "happy with him" though. He beat a far better candidate in the current primary based on voter ignorance, glib charm and lies, likely will lose in the general and sell you down the river again if he wins. He doesn't believe in anything except his narcissism.
Who?
Nikki Haley is not a serious candidate. DeSantis was nowhere near as strong as Trump either.
DeSantis was far superior - not so old, not indicted, hasn't lost to Biden once already, not involved in a bunch scandals, can serve two terms, not obese, better on handling Covid, not related to Kushner, on the right of Trump on various issues, etc.
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I preferred DeSantis too. But elections are contests and it was Trump's job to beat him, which he did, fairly; it would be silly for someone whose preference is DeSantis > Trump > Biden to punish Trump for doing so by not voting for him (or even voting for Biden) in the general.
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Trump is currently poised to beat Biden in the general. MAGA likes Trump and Trump likes MAGA. J6 or whatever aside, no politician in America today has withstood as much pressure as Trump, and if Trump wanted to sell out his base, he could have. We could argue all day about this, but your complaints to me don't add anything that hasn't been debated a million times before.
Twenty years ago before MAGA even existed, its precursors like the Tea Party had almost no institutional support. Ten years ago, the conservative faction was represented by people like Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, and Trump's nomination was hotly, hotly contested. Today, MAGA is the dominant faction in Republican politics, even marshaling the commitment to unseat a Speaker of the House, and establishment Republicans have largely made peace with Trump as the leader. Like it or hate it, MAGA is proving effective at taking over the Republican Party. In light of that, it's hard to argue that MAGA is especially irrational. They are clearly one of the most effective factions currently operating in American politics.
"MAGA" from the 2016 campaign trail or "MAGA" from the 'legal immigration is actually good for the economy' that Trump started parroting in office after one too many a meeting with the fine folks from the Heritage Foundation?
"MAGA" is an empty political slogan that one too many 'right wing' American pours all their hopes and dreams into. It's vague enough to fit all of them. Vote for change!
To give a factual example of why "MAGA" is a marketing thing and not a political thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2018_United_States_federal_government_shutdown
"MAGA", if it ever was a thing, caved in, got on all fours and kissed the ring of TPTB. No wall, no deportations, more immigration. That has been its state ever since.
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Tea party was about fiscal responsibility. At the end of Trump administration US was close to outright socialism, with the stimmy checks, rent moratorium and unemployment paying more than a minimum wage job. If Tea party mutated into that, that's some real "Cthulhu only swims left" stuff. Your guy wins a popularity contest and you completely lose any mission objective along the way.
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