It’s really interesting watching her and gaming out what she is trying to do.
In one take, she’s almost brave and almost gets it. She just can’t take that last step of having a spine.
In what may be a more cynical take but which I think is more likely: she’s playing a longer game to after 2024, when she can position herself as a post-Trump candidate. And along those lines, intentionally creating plausible deniability now that she can point to in 2028, for a future claim that she actually stood up against him…without taking what would right now be a political death blow of actually standing up against him.
If she does try this in 2028, I hope Lynne Cheney runs against her for the GOP nomination and cleans Haley’s clock…to then lose to whoever the Democrats put forward. Since that Democrat will, on pro-choice alone, be unavoidably saner in policies no matter who the candidate might be.
Her whole strategy is to be the only candidate left after he gets convicted or dies of apoplexy (I’m fine with either, but I’d like the conviction to come first). Meanwhile she has to try to thread the needle of being opposed to the clown while also not offending the base.
In my dream sequence Trump is serially convicted, leaving Haley as the last candidate standing. Then she and the rest of the GOP lose massively everywhere because the racists and sexists won’t support a woman who isn’t a daughter of the Confederacy, and they don’t come out and vote.
The GOP implodes, the crazies form their own ‘Fuckwit caucus’ and slide back into irrelevancy. Maybe the Democrats get some stuff done for a few years.
I don’t want this country divided any further. I don’t think it’s in the best interests for America to have an 80-year-old president sitting in jail and having everybody upset about it.
The only way “everybody” would be upset is if anyone who isn’t a MAGA cultist is dead. Really telling on yourself and your real idea of “unity” here, Haley.
In short, Haley will decriminalize corruption and criminal acts for the top 0.001% of society. Hell, it will even incentivize it. A new industry will be spawned! Millions of jobs will be created to feed the labor required to power this marvelous new economic model! It will need a name! TRUMPISM! That is IT! It has worked on the pilot scale, with only a few beneficiaries, and now it must be brought to a slightly larger group of the few. And it needs a means of communicating the message to the masses…
Umm…no, it doesn’t. Someone doesn’t have to have been found guilty, or even charged, to be pardoned. Ford pardoned Nixon and Nixon hadn’t yet been charged with anything. There continues to be this belief that in order to accept a pardon, you have to have either been found guilty or admitted guilt, or that the act of accepting the pardon means you are admitting guilt. None of that is true.
Exactly. If that day happens, I plan to shoot off a few fireworks. (Just sparkly ones, without bangs, so as not to upset the local dogs or anyone else who doesn’t like bangs.)
Right.
I’ve read a lot about this and I’m sorry, but I have never felt there were truly compelling reasons for Ford to pardon Nixon.
That being said, no matter that the both denied it till they croaked, you know damn well there was a deal struck at some point between them.
I think this is a likely scenario, and I also think the main scenario of Trump remaining alive and free through the 2024 election also results in the Democrats winning.
I have yet to see any solid reason why Trump will gain a single swing state he lost in 2020. If anything, I think he will lose far harder.
No complacency of course. We need to make sure the sane majority gets out to vote in all blue states and swing states, just like we did in 2020.
For starters, because he has a lot of allies working behind the scenes to change how votes are counted and ratified. Complacency is not an option. It’s not enough for Biden to win in 2024, he has to win by a big enough margin that no one but the craziest MAGA devotees have any basis to question the results.
All of which will require legislative change before 11/2024, which is not enough time. : ) Especially in all the swing states needed to win, which have Democratic governors and not enough GOP votes to override their vetoes. : )
That article does list all the ways they’ve tried. And also been shut down in.
Just making the case against feeling we’re doomed. As long as we all get out there and fight, we really do have this for 2024.
They don’t have to change the laws to turn the 2024 vote count into an absolue clusterfuck. They just have to get more people who don’t care about faithful execution of the law into key positions.
I think a lot of people don’t really appreciate how much worse 2020 could have been if there weren’t so many government officials who put adherence to the law over their fealty to Trump. We were a handful of key sycophants away from a full-blown Constitutional crisis.
I dunno, but if we had a convicted felon and rapist NOT sitting in jail, even more of us would be upset. President is a non-value-added adjective in this sentence.
Didn’t “a lot” of republicans vote for Biden last time around? What if they did so because during an active health crisis and having just seen four years of Trump in power they crossed party lines, but now that Trump’s term is four years in the rearview and COVID is less a clear and present danger what if basically none of them do that, maybe they don’t vote for anyone for president, or maybe they vote party line.
That could be significant.
What if after four years of a sane president some of the “independent” voters don’t go as far as to decide Trump is a good idea or even a viable protest candidate, but that “things are ok” so they don’t need to go vote for Biden.
What if after four years of not getting action on whatever legsliatave priority various democrats have (“sure the ACA is still alive, but it didn’t turn into Medicare for all!”, or “what happened to loan forgiveness” (hint: the GOP))?
I don’t want any of that to happen, and I’m going to make sure I go vote, but I’m absolutely going to mentally prepare myself for at lest the possibility that something bad will happen. Not to the point where I am demoralized by it and can’t function and can’t go vote or support myself or anything.
NOTE: while I see those all as realistic reasons 45 could gain some votes, Biden at least has the advantage of being an incumbent, and while we don’t have the best economy going it is pretty decent, his record mostly speaks for him and the biggest part that speaks against is “hasn’t been able to do much with a minority in both houses”, which is a pretty tough spot to get anything done from.
