His base is hardly an unassailable majority. The “everyone else” in this situation handily out weigh them. Any combination of winning that everyone else over or Trump adjacent everyone else just bowing out in disgust can overcome whatever plurality to minority of Americans truly won’t ever abandon him.
And there are also good signs that his base is shrinking. Aside from polling of actual Trump voters showing fewer of them would do so again. You’ve got some pretty epic failures by hardcore trumpist candidates in deep Trump country and some truly shocking successes by DNC candidates in places where that should not have been possible.
So yeah his base will never abandon him. Because that’s what a base is. The true believers. The reliable never going away votes. But his base sure as shit isn’t growing. And I’ve never bought that it was as big as is assumed. Dude won based on a mathematic quirk. A handful of votes in a handful of areas. And there’s indications that his base is beginning to shrink, along with a clear if in-the-short-term tight pathway to making them moot.
Again Watergate took 2 years to wrap up. Just because this shit isn’t wrapping up in just the way wed like it to right now doesnt mean it’s not heading that way. Just because his base hasn’t collapsed immediately doesn’t mean their growing or around for the long haul.
Yes, but what is it? We don’t know and we don’t care. JUST VOTE FOR IT
The USA are ahead of Britain then.
The IRA nearly killed Maggie and John Major though.
Even if we can’t get Republican Senators to remove a treasonous incompetent corrupt sociopath from office then we can at least get their names on record. Let history record who stood up in support of the worst man to ever hold the office.
Trump is the only one, the only one, truly, who can save us from President Pence… a competent, right-wing nut.
We will always be the country that elected trump as president.
We’ve survived right-wing nuts before. The last Republican President we had tried to change the constitution of the United States to ban same-sex marriage. Following on the heels of the disgraced traitor would likely hurt Pence’s agenda anyway. Ford didn’t exactly have an easy time at the job after pardoning Nixon.
You mean like time and actuarial statistics? Given that many Trump supporters are older men, I’d say a million or so have already died off.
Just as long as Trump isn’t assassinated by some idiot. The thought of having Pence Make America Gilead Again with the support of self proclaimed moderates comes straight from my nightmares.
I’ve been thinking about this the last week or so. I might (easily) be wrong here, but my theory is that the Republican Senate and House will abruptly turn against Trump within the next two months or so. Why?
Because Trump is now doing random crazy shit that affects the stock market badly, which he wasn’t doing last year. I’ve been paying attention because I’ve been watching my 401(k) retirement fund repeatedly get knocked down, struggle back up again, and then get knocked back down some more.
Don’t get me wrong, the Republicans couldn’t care less about the actual economy. But their owners, sorry I mean campaign donors, are the extremely rich, who generally have a lot of their money diversified in the stock market in one form or another. The trade war stuff hurts that.
Trump has just cost a lot of people real money in the short term - call it 4-5% knocked off their total worth. He’s made it clear he’s not listening to anybody about anything any more, so they can count on unanticipated and unpredictable behavior like this being regular occurrences from now on.
They might sit it out for a bit longer, just to be sure, because a lot of those guys love the way he’s gutting regulations but after he does the next wacky stunt that hurts business, they’ll be sure.
Once Trump is officially bad for business, that won’t be tolerated by the owner class, and Republican politicians care much more about their opinions than they do about the actual voters. Voters got no money.
At that point, look for a bunch of Republicans in Congress to suddenly pretend they’ve developed spines, and that everything they’ve been ignoring up to this point is abruptly a big deal. Because even with crazy angry right wing nuts in their districts, most of these guys can not get elected without spending millions of dollars they don’t have. (And for some of them even getting elected matters less than what they can pocket along the way.)
He could be convicted, jailed and still serve out his term from prison.
I am good with that.
It’s an acceptable compromise.
Pence is competent only compared to Trump. He’s kind of a dumbass, and as a governor managed to get everyone mad at him by stupid antics.
I’m with you on that. I think that most of the people who like him, like him because he is a raging asshole. No kind of tape is going to change the fact that he is one.
That’s wildly optimistic.
It will take an awful lot more than that for an abrupt, complete turn. I mean there people are still singing the praises of G-Dubs and that guy straight tanked the economy. Denial on this particular subject runs deep.
We’re already seeing GOP politicians “retire” and decide to forgo another run for their seat. That’s a response to the less that encouraging (for the GOP) results of special elections. Polling shifts. Constant scandal. Increasingly worrying shit coming from Mueller. And the one to one “Trump sneeze, stocks fall” dynamic.
But the overall down turn in the market is still in long expected correction territory. And in large part they’re still huffing the Trump paint.
This is a continuum. A change over time situation. So long as the stakes stay the same. Well keep seeing what were seeing. I doubt we’ll see a significant change in the GOP-Trump relationship until after the mid term primaries. When the campaigns ramp up and polling starts in earnest. Sufficiently bad outlook for the GOP could cause more congresspeople to panic. A good outlook for them will cause them to dig back in.
I doubt we’ll see something big enough out of Mueller by the midterms to really shake things up. There’s some scuttlebutt that he’s wants to release a statement on Trump’s nvolvement in the next couple months. And if he does it’s unlikely it’d be good for Trump (policy is to not do that unless they found something illegal, they don’t announce that some one’s been cleared). But it’s just as likely that it’s bait to get Trump to submit to questioning.
There are some positive things happening, like the reversal of the voodoo gerrymandering in PA. There’s also the groundswell of support for respect for women and against gun violence.
That being said, there is a lot going wrong. Citizens United. 3/4 of the states needed to ratify a constitutional amendment? All the vast majority of Americans want is to do is add some gun control language to temper the 2nd amendment. Is that ever going to happen? The GOP refused to hold a confirmation hearing for a sitting president’s Supreme Court nominee. That’s a violation of their oath to uphold the constitution. Are they ever going to be held accountable for that? If it were up to me (and obviously it’s not), I would force those congressmen to apologize, impeach Gorsuch and hold the confirmation hearing for Garland. Otherwise, prosecute for treason.
I feel like we are in a dangerous time for this country right now. One branch of government has gone off the rails and the other two aren’t really exercising any checks & balances because they all play for the same team. Are we really hanging on by the conscience of a few decent people with an “R” after their names who are willing to sacrifice their own political careers to do the right thing?
I usually try to keep a positive outlook, but this sucks.
I hear what you’re saying about the fatalism of thinking Trump will definitely be reelected, but I think the other side of that coin is a belief that the country will snap to its senses and realize what a horrible mistake it’s made, and Democrats just need to sit back and wait for that to happen. (obviously not what you’re doing, but you agree that mindset exists I’m sure)
Unfortunately, I think it’s more likely than not that Trump wins another term absent something that isn’t on the radar at the moment and a decent Democratic alternative. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t fight like hell against it, quite the opposite.
All I’m saying is just that: LET’S FIGHT LIKE HELL. I have no idea what the future WILL bring. Nobody does. People who claim never ever this, never ever that… are… wrong. They don’t know. But we can do everything within our ability to try for a better outcome in 2020.
