Endorsements are rarely important. They are largely a box ticking exercise. The absence of an expected endorsement can be a big story though, especially when it isn’t just absent but a public refusal to offer it.
One of the big reasons Trump has managed to persist as a force in our politics has been the coddling of his actions by the party establishment. If the party is willing to make excuses for him or even defend him then the criticisms will understandably be seen by many as just politics as usual. Pence’s refusal to endorse is part of a small but important signal that some in the party are no longer willing to do that. That signal if big enough and well amplified enough will likely change the way some of his past supporters view his actions. The question is how many will this impact?
Very much besides the point and OTT, but I am not lying or exaggerating when I say that understanding Norwegian and traveling to northern Norway (or being around multiple people from that region) is…something quite special for a foreigner. I am almost convinced that a well raised Victorian woman would die from her fainting as her delicate head would hit ice, since he gentleman would be far too shocked to catch her.
Northern Norwegian discourse is really something. In England, they have “cunt” as a “fighting word”, the type of word you use if you want to provoke anger. Oh, you wish they just called you a normal cunt in northern Norway. It is some how hard to translate their swearing though, as it is very linguistically Norwegian, but “infernally skewed-wanked (yes, I know, direct translations don’t work well) seagull cock” and “fucking retarded cow cunt” are relatively mild.
It’s funny, because Norwegians are so very different according to which region they are from. Most Norwegians think their way of talking vulgar, but they don’t give a fuck up there !
The MAGA coup have left those behind though. I don’t think it likely that the GOP will get back to “normal” even when Trump is dead. They have kindled ethnic nationalism in their party and combined it with populism and stupidity and the establishment submitted to Trump out of cynicism, thinking he and MAGA was a passing fad; but in so doing they lost control of the party. And now they are fucked. Or can vote Trump and Trump 2 (when Trump is dead).
Imo anyway, it’s what i believe. I don’t think they will become a conservative party again.
They were never REALLY a conservative party. Sure they were the home for genuine ideaological conservatives, and Conservatism was the face of the Washington set of the party. But it was never what really drove the party base, which is why they were able to deviate so much from conservative ideals (see massive debts accrued under conservative leadership) and not be punished for it. But ideological conservatism lands on a lot of the same policy goals as white christian nationalism does, and if offers a more polite explanation for trying to advance those goals so a behind the back sort of partnership was struck. But just dont take their medicare or social security. Because your voters dont really want small government…they just want a government that doesnt give stuff to “those people”.
I think the most effective conservative politicians of our time were the ones who realized that and found the rhetoric to light up their base while giving them the cover of just being a conservative. Its the Paul Ryan types who think people actually care about a smaller government who fail.
This book is a great distillation of that Amazon.com
Yeah, but I think it’s a reflection how disengaged so many people are and going back to the idea that if you are not paying attention it is easy to be aware of the criticisms of Trump and just view them as politics as usual. I actually understand the average person still having a make believe version of who Trump was prior to Jan 6th. The news here is bad enough in framing and content that if you have a busy job and raising a family so you can only consume 10 min of news a day (more than the average person does) you would come away with numerous defenses for the awful shit he’d done.
I really struggle to give people like Kinzinger and Chaney the same grace. Kinzinger was so aware that shit was going to go down that day that he came into work armed and had instructed his staff to not come in at all. He didn’t learn all this in the period between casting his cote and 06JAN yet he still voted for the fucking guy.
Look at two of the biggest animating issues in the election right now - crime and the economy. Both are objectively not just good, but improved compared to the best story Trump can tell about how his presidency impacted those figures. But given the way both are covered, and not just on Fox News, its understandable that someone can be considering a voting against Biden because of his performance on these issues.
I thought about this overnight. Is it really disengagement? I’m more inclined to think that it’s similar to the UK in the extreme where people are genuinely pissed off with everything and are happy to lurch to some extreme because of what the Pied Piper at that end preaches.
But what I do find crazy is that they had 4 years of Trump and did anything actually improve for them. COVID for example was a complete shit show under his leadership.
I wonder how much of it is because they expect more of Biden, just like more is expected of Labour. But everyone knows how bad the Tories/Trump are anyway so…
That’s weak. Covid is not really something that people care about anymore. Economy, border, crime, etc. And before anyone argues its better now due to statistic xyz, I don’t argue that it might be, I just argue that perception is what’s important (from majority of voters pov).
The loonies are real. But they are a very different group motivated by different reasons and with a very different understanding of the situation than the other portion of his supporters.
Every issue you can hit Trump on there has been a (almost always utterly horseshit) counter argument to either dismiss it, or to whataboutism it into irrelevance. Due to the way our media is set up those counterargument make it into the public consciousness. As I have already described in depth, there are large swathes of the population who dont agree with what he did, they just genuinely don’t believe he did those things.
I think it goes deeper than that as both sides tend to cherry pick what clips to play or ignore. I think you create a lot of skeptics when you omit something that is later found by the individual. e.g XZY news quotes “I hate hotdogs” when the full quote is “I hate hotdogs that are overcooked”, XZY news now looks very untrustworthy to me and seems like more of a propaganda instrument.
Reminding people that this clown suggested they should inject themselves with bleach is a potent warning that he should never be trusted with anything.
People may not care about Covid anymore, but that doesn’t mean they wont get a visceral reaction about being reminded how bad things were in Spring-summer 2020 . There has been a LOT of retconning about what happened and Trump’s handling of it, and that might ordinarily make it not worth the Biden team taking it on. But if Trump is going to hit them with the 4 year ago comparison then it opens the door to hitting him on his handling of it, which was not just bad, but bad for nefarious reasons.
