All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Revolutionary_Jack]

They won't have to drag Trump out of the White House. Conmen are pragmatic. Once he sees that this con has run its course, his focus will shift to getting away to a safe place with the money. He'll flee the country, or try to.

Exactly. Trump's ego wasn't so big that he felt it to be beneath him to declare bankruptcy multiple times.

I think he'll just resign and let Pence do the lameduck transition stuff.

[BeastieRunner]

Trump's PA, NV, and GA lawsuits have been tossed.

Toomey, Graham, and a couple other Rs have come out saying Trump's rhetoric is damaging and false.

Is it time to sharpen the knives yet?

[Adam Allen]

https://www.newsweek.com/if-trump-re...escort-1545612

And I don't know if it's a thing, but I'd also change the nuclear codes just to be careful because who knows if the Football hasn't been compromised?

The President doesn't actually get nuclear codes, he just has the authority to give the order that they're used. So ... like, while he's still POTUS, I guess Trump could give an order to nuke something for no good reason, out of spite? Though, I wouldn't consider that a "legal order", and the military are not supposed to follow illegal orders so I imagine we don't have to worry about that.

Like really, whatever their personal politics, it's human beings who grasp the severity of using nuclear weapons, who would need to follow those orders, if given.

[Mister Mets]

Democrats are going to have to hammer home the importance of the mid terms, though.

Do you think Democrats will be able to spur turnout in the midterms in favor of a 79 year old President, rather than against Trump?

And I hear the GOP saying well Trump did better in the popular vote this time around. Yes but a lot of those are Trump hardcores. How many of them are going to come out and vote for other GOp memebers in 2022 if the GOP tries to distance away from Trump. And how many are going to vote in 2024 when Trump is pretty much a joke in the history books?

The new voters Trump got aren't as likely to be Trump hardcores. It's newcomers to politics, or people who didn't vote for him last time but thought he wasn't as bad as they feared (or who really hated the Democrats this time around.)

No it’s not. GA was more that you got blacks in the Atlanta area that were disenfranchised better access to voting. You didn’t get more Deep South Republicans. In the rust belt all Biden did was win back a sliver of more Obama voters. Without PA, WI, MI, and GA, then Arizona which is the outlier wouldn’t have mattered. Philly and Atlanta turnout were actually the key deciders here along with working class Obama voters that defected 4 years ago. And even in Arizona if you dive into the meat and potatoes it was basically that Biden cut into Maricopa county which had a strong Latino population that leans Dem that came out in greater force and Maricopa had been shifting left for awhile. So when that doesn’t fit the narrative that Republicans saved them.

Biden won off winning back Obama voters in the Midwest that went Trump, larger turnout in Philly and Atlanta (and in Atlanta it was due to re-enfranchising black voters in GA. Then the greater turnout this go around drew out more latino’s who were left leaning in a key county that had been shifting in AZ. Those blocks made the difference.

The reason the election was close and the reason we lost ground in the house and might not win the Senate is because Trump did BETTER with Republicans than 2016.

Republicans actually backed Trump hard as hell in this election. Biden did not win because of moderate Republicans. If anything this election proved that they are all in on him and didn’t care about a single thing he did in the last 4 years.

What makes you think a more progressive candidate wouldn't be conceding right now? Did any progressive candidate either outperform Biden, or help Biden in a key swing state?

Maybe Netflix will do a 6 season series about it, like they did about Queen Elizabeth. Just call it The Clown.

A Trump TV show might be the way to do it. We already talk about the showrunners.

Right.

The other thing about Trump is that it's so hard to boil down his Presidency to a single throughline. Nixon you can identify salient points (Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the visit to China). With Hitler and the Nazis, obviously the overwhelming point is the Holocaust.

With Trump, it's 4 crazy intense years of scandal. The Impeachment would have been a defining part for any President but for Trump it's about Scandals 11-20 at best. The Pandemic was the defining crisis of his Presidency but that came in his final months. And even then October with the Rose Garden Massacre, the insane stunts he pulled out, the lack of humbling and arrogance.

It's a lot.

Usually with biopics, real political figures and so on don't always have the most interesting lives and so on, and trying to find the key moments to build up and build around is hard. With Trump the problem is there's just too much stuff. And that's just the stuff we know and is in public.

The secret stuff is probably even more worse or more salacious. We got a hint of that in the Woodward Tapes.

One structure for a Trump movie might be something like The Devil Wears Prada, or The Last King of Scotland, where a larger than life figure is seen from the perspective of a newcomer. Hope Hicks might be a good co-lead if there's some kind of character arc for her.

[GindyPosts]

Sadly, while I think this is true, Trump was the best fit for that role.

Any more hardline and even the lifelong Rs will begin to recoil.

That might be the legacy of Trumpism ... eradicating the extreme elements.

The only other person I could think of that might be further right than Donald Trump (besides hardline ex-sheriffs such as Joe Arpaio and David Clarke, who pissed people off endlessly for running as a Democrat despite not having a single opinion that was remotely moderate) with any legit pull was Steve King, and Iowans kicked him out in the primaries this year. The rest of them are mostly going to be fringe candidates that will find success at the local and state levels, and one or two will sneak into the House, but they hopefully will be discouraged on a national level after the headaches the past four years caused and the end result.

[Iron Maiden]

Let's hope Bill Maher is wrong about this.....

[BeastieRunner]

GA says they have 900 military, 800 cured (signature had to be verified in person), & 1000 provisional left.

They will be certified on the 13th, verified on the 20th, and then recounted unless Trump concedes.

A recount at the state level would have to be completed by December 1st.

The EC convenes on the 14th of December.

That doesn't give Trump much time to fight them in court before the EC convenes.

[Mister Mets]

They won't have to drag Trump out of the White House. Conmen are pragmatic. Once he sees that this con has run its course, his focus will shift to getting away to a safe place with the money. He'll flee the country, or try to.

I wonder if part of the reason he's being so obnoxious now is to convince Biden to agree to not prosecute.

Exactly. Trump's ego wasn't so big that he felt it to be beneath him to declare bankruptcy multiple times.

I think he'll just resign and let Pence do the lameduck transition stuff.

I doubt it, just because it makes it harder to talk about running in 2024.

Saying that Lindsay Graham is a closeted Queen is hardly ‘homophobia’. Unless, of course, you think there’s something inherently wrong with being gay.

No, calling Graham a closeted Queen is based ENTIRELY around the hypocrisy of the Chinless Chipmunk’s flip-floppery on everything, and his strong anti-LGBT+ voting record. The dude is as gay as Iceman, and like Bobby did, he thinks no one knows.

Multiple escorts in his area have spoken up about their experiences with him. Rumors have swirled about him and the man he lives next door to. Then there’s the fact that he speaks and has the mannerisms of Paul Lynne playing Scarlett O’Hara (which obviously isn’t proof, but in light of everything else we know about him and has been rumored about him? It’s pretty ‘damning’. But, look...I’m entirely straight passing, myself, until I speak about something I’m passionate about, at which point a purse full of glitter falls out of my mouth. There’s nothing inherently homophobic about observing a person exhibiting ‘perceived gay’ mannerisms in conjunction with other evidence to come to a conclusion.).

He is ALSO a ‘confirmed bachelor’, which was slang for gay when he was a young man. He’s gay. And that’s FINE! But he’s also an incredible hypocrite, and that ISN’T fine.

He just either hates himself so much because of the generations of misinformation and lies that he suffered under and internalized as a child (In which case, he needs to retire and seek help in adjusting to the new normal)...or because his greed and lust for power is more overwhelmingly important than his rights as a gay man (in which case, he should retire and just go away, because no one likes a hypocrite bootlicker).

Basically, Lindsay Graham is Peter Pettigrew: an abuse victim whose years of suffering have turned him from his potential for good into a pathetic toadying sycophant for a great evil that is only using him and has nothing but contempt for him...and who has ensured that the people who WOULD have been willing to help him ALSO have contempt for him, because of his actions.

It’s really that simple.

Making assumptions and mocking the private life of someone who doesn't fit a particular image of masculinity does seem homophobic.

So in all seriousness is no one else worried about the possibility of a civil war?

Nope.

Done.



The polls not going 100% the Democrats' way does not mean the GOP is vindicated or that their party position is strong, unchallengable, and lasting or without any vulnerabilities. But that's a fair bit away.

There's a major difference between what I said (Republicans are more likely than not to take back the House in 2022, Democrats won't have as good an opportunity as they seemed to a week ago for a few years at least) and claiming the GOP is unchallengeable and without any vulnerabilities.

[worstblogever]

GA says they have 900 military, 800 cured (signature had to be verified in person), & 1000 provisional left.

They will be certified on the 13th, verified on the 20th, and then recounted unless Trump concedes.

That doesn't give Trump much time to fight them in court before the EC convenes.

If those 2700 votes were 100% Trump votes (and they won't be) Biden still wins the state by 4,000.

The recount should still should be happening, unless somehow Biden's lead goes to about 4800 to 4900 votes, and gets out of the .1% range. But there's no kind of "error" that is going to dissolve that kind of margin.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The President doesn't actually get nuclear codes, he just has the authority to give the order that they're used.

Interesting. And I guess the stuff about the codes and so on that we actually know about isn't the full detail to protect classified information and all that. So obviously the codes are changed regularly I should hope.

Do you think Democrats will be able to spur turnout in the midterms in favor of a 79 year old President, rather than against Trump?

Midterm turnout has nothing to do whatsoever with the candidate. Obama was popular and beloved, and young and yet his Presidency saw major Midterm setbacks.

Biden's age or whatnot will have little direct impact going forward.

One structure for a Trump movie might be something like The Devil Wears Prada, or The Last King of Scotland, where a larger than life figure is seen from the perspective of a newcomer. Hope Hicks might be a good co-lead if there's some kind of character arc for her.

Hope Hicks isn't a newcomer. She worked for Ivanka Trump was already involved in Trumpworld before the Presidency, and is a close aide to the President. That's at least what we know (There are of course rumors and subtext about Hicks and Trump). In either case, Hicks is very much a Magda Goebbels or Valkyrie Mitford or Eva Braun type. She's a fascist not some newcomer or innocent. And I don't know what character arc she can have...because she was loyal to Trump even after he infected her with COVID. No growth, no change, nothing.

The obvious structure would be Woodward and Trump's interview book if any. That serves as a good microcosm for 45's Presidency and you have an ambiguity and historical connection, Woodward who took down Nixon, with Trump again. If you cast Robert Redford as Woodward, you can bill it as a sequel to All the president' men with Dustin Hoffmann cameoing as Bernstein. And of course the whole ambiguity of why Woodward didn't publish that earlier and later can be a story of Coronavirus and so on. Trump genuinely sounds different in Woodward's book than anywhere else, so it's a picture of the guy we won't get anywhere else and it's worth dramatizing.

[skyvolt2000]

Enjoy.........

https://mobile.twitter.com/SaintHoax...51915658432513

[zinderel]

Quote Originally Posted by Celgress
Indeed, I'm aware of this but as I wrote that's only a small part of my methodology. After the election, I'll be more willing to share.

I think this is the guy a lot of people want to hear from.

On a more fun note. Where do you think they are going to build the Trump Presidential Library

The Trump Presidential Library is going to be a mail-order catalogue for Slavic escorts, on display in a run down bodega in the Bronx.

[BeastieRunner]

The Trump Presidential Library is going to be a mail-order catalogue for Slavic escorts, on display in a run down bodega in the Bronx.

There's a sink hole forming outside Mar-A-Largo.

Put it there.

[worstblogever]

I mean, there are a lot of minor implications of norms that Trump broke. A presidential library might be another one, considering he might be under indictment and unable to see to one being set up after January 2021.

Speaking of, we'll have White House Correspondents' Dinners again.

And the tradition of the previous president being present to hang the portrait of the prior president? Well, the same... I don't know if Trump will be there to be able to see his put up on a White House wall...

But I am realizing that at some point Joe Biden will get to be the one to hang the portrait of his good friend Barack. And that puts a smile on my face.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The only other person I could think of that might be further right than Donald Trump (besides hardline ex-sheriffs such as Joe Arpaio and David Clarke, who pissed people off endlessly for running as a Democrat despite not having a single opinion that was remotely moderate) with any legit pull was Steve King, and Iowans kicked him out in the primaries this year. The rest of them are mostly going to be fringe candidates that will find success at the local and state levels, and one or two will sneak into the House, but they hopefully will be discouraged on a national level after the headaches the past four years caused and the end result.

What about Tom Cotton? He's been talked up as a POTUS candidate for the right, for some time now? Granted the dude looks a little creepy and he has really extreme political views.

I doubt it, just because it makes it harder to talk about running in 2024.

1) There's no rule that if you quit the Presidency at the end of one term you can't run again. For a normal candidate and a normal party, it would be political suicide of course.
2) Trump's not a normal candidate, the Republicans are not a normal party.
3) Trump doesn't care for rules, so he won't care for norms, expectations or guidelines. He can say, "The cowardly GOP backstabbed me and refused to help with the votes, so I left rather than participate in the phone Biden's phony transition".

In either case, the GOP would prefer someone who can give them a 8 year regime rather than a guy who can offer another 4 more years. The GOP will want a potential 2nd Reagan.