Maybe. However he wasn’t the president at the time, so people that were going to vote Republican “no matter what” still had some other Republicans to choose. Independents who didn’t like Hillary may well have not like this version of Trump even more.
Some of Trump’s lasting support is also (at least I believe) people maintain gin they didn’t make a mistake so they don’t have to be wrong bad people. As long as they maintain the belief that Trump was the right pick then they can be happy. For many people the feeling of being right is more important then actually being right.
Remember also his win in three key states was by less then 2%, in one I think it was by less then 1%. If 1 in 50 Trump voters (in those states) decided this was “too much” then he wouldn’t be president.
I think that inability to be sure is what scares me the most out of where we find ourselves. If you’d asked in 2004 what would have happened if Bush were to refuse to concede and try to nullify the election, no reasonable person would have argued that the GOP as a group would go along with that either through active participation or shrugging acceptance. But here we are! In just 15 years!
Shit, does anyone for a moment that McConnell & Graham wouldn’t have a press conference on the steps of the Capitol building flanked by a dozen other GOP senators to announce that they were disappointed in the divisive rhetoric coming from the Democrats during this time of crisis?
Nobody fucking knows what would happen if Trump tried to nullify the election, and if that doesn’t tell us that our Republic might be in danger on an existential level I don’t know what would.
You’re asking a dog to be a cat and water to stop being wet. McConnell et al have gotten everything they could have imagined in their wildest dreams from this President, and they will never abandon him.
I honestly don’t know which would be the more fatal for our system of government–to have the SC ratify such a nullification on the 5-4 vote, or if it ruled against Trump and he announced that he was not bound by their authority. I guess it’s like trying to figure out whether shooting yourself in the head or drinking a glass of poison is more fatal.
This crisis is coming for sure. Right now its certain that trump will face jail when he’s out of office, so you know he will not willingly leave office.
Only way out I think is if he finds some way for Barr to make this go away.
The GOP has developed a remarkable super-power: the ability to deny documented reality and supplant it with an implausible and impossible to prove alternate reality. See also “The Deep State.”
There will be endless dismissals of this on Fox News as “not really a crime” and “everybody does it” and “what about Hillary’s emails.” Ultimately the GOP base buys into it, doesn’t vote their congressmen out of office, and keeps complaining about “the swamp.”
It’s probably more that if they turn on him now, they have to explain why they didn’t do it earlier. Between prostration and craven ass-covering, I don’t know which option’s worse.
I agree. His “base and cohorts”. But there are still those (ex: independents) who likely would have voted the other way had they known then what we know now… so this revelation is a good thing as far as 2020, and as a way to make his talking head enablers sweat more under the hot lights and questions.
I’m leaning toward the former, after reading the following in the obit below:
He wrote a scathing dissent in Bush v. Gore, the 2000 case that ended Florida’s presidential recount and anointed George W. Bush: “Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”
Looking at 538’s aggravation of approval/disapproval ratings on day 4 of Trump’s presidency he had 45.5% approval and 41.3% disapproval. On day 910 he has 52.6% disapproval and 42.5% approval.
While it isn’t a guarantee that the approval/disapproval numbers are directly related to a vote percentage, it isn’t much of a leap. So he has lost 3% of his approval. If that maps to votes in the three key states, even at a 50% discount he would have lost. His disapproval has climbed by over 10%, again if that maps to votes even with a large discount that is a huge swing.
He didn’t win just with the votes of people that heard the racist dog whistle and liked it. He didn’t win based just on the people that saw he was slime and decided to hold their nose because he might bring them an end to abortion. He didn’t win based just on people that “vote for anything ending with an R”. He also needed to fool some of the “independent” voters that he would be a breath of fresh air. Some people really did believe his drain the swamp crap.
1 out of 50? Maybe. If it really was 1 out of 50 knowing the truth would have changed the results of the election.
Remember he not only lost the popular vote, but he can close to not winning the electoral collage either.
Or maybe I’m idealistic. Maybe it wouldn’t have convinced 1 out of 50 people to swap their votes (or 1 out of 25 to just skip voting Trump and not vote at all).
The deeper we go the more I see people who voted for him digging in. Maybe it’s just a defense mechanism so they don’t have to admit to themselves that the man they voted for was every bit as horrible as they were warned he was.
i once read about a cross cultural study where americans were deemed to be the least likely to change their mind even in light of new facts. brits were close behind.
i think it’s something about the way we perceive individualism. that our choices and our opinions are ourselves. we argue as if they were a religion. as if there was always one right way or one right belief. ( ugh. christianity. )
for instance, i heard a great piece this morning on npr about how many people view racism. that it’s not something you do, it’s something you are. so to call someone’s remarks racist is for them to be racist, forever.
but it’s not how most(*) people work. we don’t do the right thing all of the time. we don’t see our privilege all the time. we don’t always understand the effects of our words or actions in the moment.
and so many people (americans) are loathe to say something they did was racist, because if they did, they’re doomed forever.
(*) excluding the donald trumps, richard spencers, and strom thurmands of the world.
