Starker on 4/10/2020 at 13:41
Quote Posted by demagogue
If he dies, then he becomes a kind of martyr that goes down in kook-right legend and his influence will infect the GOP for the next generation.
The way you phrase it, it makes it seem as if this wasn't already the case, but yes, it would certainly exacerbate it.
Starker on 4/10/2020 at 22:31
Voter fraud, etc:
Quote:
(
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-technology-arrests-michigan-voting-rights-e0d49155dc8f347b1347cf779fd43812)
Two notorious conservative operatives were charged Thursday with felonies in connection with false robocalls that aimed to dissuade residents in Detroit and other U.S. cities from voting by mail, Michigan's attorney general announced.
Jacob Wohl, 22, and Jack Burkman, 54, each face four felony counts in Detroit, including conspiring to intimidate voters in violation of election law and using a computer to commit crimes, Attorney General Dana Nessel said.
The calls falsely warned residents in majority-Black Detroit and urban areas in at least four other states that voting by mail in the Nov. 3 election could subject people to arrest, debt collection and forced vaccination, Nessel said.
The men, who have a history of staging hoaxes and spreading false smears against prominent Democrats and government officials, are not in custody and no date for their arraignments has been set.
[...]
demagogue on 5/10/2020 at 00:14
This already seems like ancient news, but anyway ... looking back at the debate, this is pretty apparent in retrospect. (Whether or not it was Chris Christie that gave him that advice, it's exactly the kind of logic that makes sense here. Trump didn't interrupt as much in his previous debates.)
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/4gYQV5f.jpgQuote Posted by Starker
The way you phrase it, it makes it seem as if this wasn't already the case, but yes, it would certainly exacerbate it.
Yes but there's another part that goes with what I said, which is that to pop the cultist bubble, it's important that there's a clear image of Trump loosing by a landslide, states like Texas voting blue, him getting arrested, and the evidence of Trump's crimes (Mueller's report Part 2, etc.) actually getting explained in terms the public can understand in the context of an actual conviction. If he dies, you never have that. With the case we have now, there's a good chance that can still happen.
Starker on 5/10/2020 at 00:56
Sure, when the prophesy of Lord Dampnut defeating the Deep State fails it might pop the bubble for a few, but if you look at similar cases in history there are a lot of people who will cling to it even harder. He is already a martyr, being blocked by sinister forces from enacting his illegal and unconstitutional policies and possibly the biggest victim on the planet.
I mean even at this point some of these nuts are saying he intentionally caught the virus for the sake of the US to prove it's not a big deal.
demagogue on 5/10/2020 at 02:25
Hmm, you may be right. Maybe it calls for a harsh denazification program a la Germany, Year Zero. =L
At least we shouldn't underestimate the lengths these people may go to to keep Trumpism alive...
Edit: I wanted to post (
https://i.imgur.com/JRFZqmY.jpg) this, but it somehow seems going over the line & giving into the cynicism. I can't wish for bad outcomes, even if they make for good punchlines.
Starker on 5/10/2020 at 02:42
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/5oWyD5p.gifI don't want to doom and gloom, but I don't see him as much as a cause than a symptom of what has been happening. Also, the GOP is by now firmly tied to the ideology and the next Republican candidate will probably not be a conventional politician like Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney, but someone who can play to the grievances of the Republican base like Tucker Carlson.
Can't remember who said it, but the metaphor is that parties imploding are like white stars -- they get hotter as they get smaller.
Jason Moyer on 5/10/2020 at 09:32
Yeah, he's just a symptom. The GOP has been courting wingnuts since 1964, and especially since 1990-ish, I just don't think they ever expected one to actually get nominated in the primaries. My theory is that once the DNC gave up and started pushing candidates who were basically Reagan with more populist oriented social platforms, the GOP couldn't attack them on policy grounds so they had to start making shit up like the Clinton Body Count and whatnot.
demagogue on 5/10/2020 at 09:45
It's amazing that a month from the election, the "first term impeachment/assassination" option in this thread's poll is still a viable candidate to win, if you interpret the virus doing the assassinating.
So anyway, the news is that Trump's covid is a lot more severe than the doctors were letting on at first.
What are some of y'all's predictions here?
Trump's support is already slipping (reportedly at least), but it makes sense, just by virtue of him being absent and no one knowing what's really going on with him, and if it goes on ... I'm trying to imagine what the narrative looks like if he brushes with death and emerges right on the eve of the election. They were talking about him being like a cornered animal before. I could imagine him really lashing out. I just don't know how his followers would respond. Because they're so detached from reality, or have been in the past, it's so hard to predict ... do they suddenly see the light or double-down, and what does doubling-down even mean in this context?
And what's the talk about the election going to the Supreme Court or Congress? That's where it could get really crazy, where Trump loses in a blow out but they try to pull some cheap political technicality maneuver. A lot of what I'm imagining involves lots of rioting in the streets, one side or another, like none we've seen in the US for a long time.
But there are a lot of chances it all ends up being a nothing burger in the end. That wouldn't be very fitting for whoever is writing this stupid script, but it's in the cards. But even then, we don't know just which nothing burger it could be, and where that puts us three months from now.
SubJeff on 5/10/2020 at 10:06
Quote Posted by demagogue
What are some of y'all's predictions here?
I predict he will recover and then win the election.
I don't think his Covid is "a lot more severe" but it may be a bit worse than the way they are playing it off as light. We need 7-10 days to tell as this is the timeframe whereby people, even if they appear to be doing okay, can quickly deteriorate and require intubation. If this happens he is more likely than not to die.
He tested positive on Thursday 01st Oct, so it's easy to track. We're on the 05th now so he's about 4-6 days post infection (we don't really know when he was infected).
This weekend will be crunch time for him. I do not envy him - this is so unpredictable and he is a high risk. They will have minimised his risk with the medication he's having but the other thing is him having steroids means it's not quite as mild a course as he'd like us to believe.
Starker on 5/10/2020 at 16:01
I think his chances are really good, because he gets the best care anyone in the world aside from actual billionaires can get. I've heard he's getting some kind of experimental treatments and he even did a short waving tour for his supporters gathered round the hospital (and yes, I know people serving the president of the US willingly put their lives on the line to do it, but I bet they didn't ever think they'd be doing it by guarding an infectious president's ego trip).
As for how it affects his chances at the ballot box, I don't think it really will all that much. Biden has held a consistent lead all throughout the year and the numbers don't seem to really budge all that much even as Lord Dampnut's campaign has poured a billion dollars on this dumpster fire of their own making (though how much of it was simply grifted away is an exercise left for future historians). Hell, they are now pouring money into that liberal hotbed of Kansas and apparently even Texas could be in play. And that's probably why so much effort is going into suppressing the vote and disenfranchising groups likely to lean Democrat, what with the removal of polling stations, all the crap that has gone on with the postal service, and robocalls threatening to disclose voter information to the police, debt collectors, and forced vaccination programs.
Nah, I bet the very small slippage we've seen so far has been more because of the hundreds of thousands of dead people due to the mismanagement of the pandemic, the Supreme Court fight energising the left (who as the majority live and die by voter turnout), the dissing of US fallen soldiers by Lord Dampnut, and his disastrous debate performance where he consistently came across as mean and ugly, constantly jeering at Biden, interrupting him, and attacking his family. I think it's likely that a portion of his supporters are somewhat discouraged and can taste defeat because at the debate Biden didn't turn out to be either the demented old man on the verge of death who's barely able to string together two sentences or the radical socialist who just wants to burn the US down. The Republicans set the expectations for Biden so low that he kind of seemed like a superstar simply by virtue of not falling apart for 90 minutes, and then on top of that he actually managed to punch back and even look cool: (
https://twitter.com/TDucklo/status/1311863055362461696).
That doesn't mean it will be over when Lord Dampnut loses, though. You can bet he will do anything to put the legitimacy of the election in question, incite chaos and violence, and sabotage the next administration. One of the things Hitler did after it became clear Germany was losing was the Nero Decree where he ordered the destruction of Germany's infrastructure -- not just as a scorched earth tactic, but also to punish the German people for failing him. You can bet Lord Dampnut and the GOP will do anything in their power to make things as bad as possible for any future Democratic administration. They are more comfortable in the resistance/sabotage business than at governing anyway, since their policies are so unpalatable that they can't achieve them even if they hold all of the power, which is probably why they desperately try to pack of the courts with even patently unqualified candidates.