US and NA Politics (General)

[Disciple of Fate]

That would require the GoP not being full blown participants in this shitshow. If Trump dies before the election, that might be worse than him just losing it. He might be replaced by a(n outwardly) less repulsive candidate, who will simply carry on the destruction of the state in the name of christian nationalism.

[Haighus]

I dunno, Trump has a significant personal cult that a different candidate may not be able to harness effectively enough to win.

[skyth]

They would just fall in line.

[Haighus]

Jul 2, 2024 6:41:33 GMT -5 skyth said:

They would just fall in line.

I mean if Trump dies. His replacement may not be able to motivate Trump's cult to bother voting in the same way, and lack of turnout can sink a presidential candidate. A lot of Trump's core supporters seem to be Trumpists more than they are Republicans.

[skyth]

They are also easily manipulated by the right wing and hate is a strong motivator. They're going to go out and vote against the 'liberals'.

[Haighus]

Isn't that what the Republicans thought would happen in the 2022 mid terms? The "red wave" definitely failed to materialise. It really seems that their party has been gutted into a cult of Trump, and he's 78.

[mdgv2]

Honestly? I think you’d have a hard time convincing them it’s real when he does inevitably pass away, and he’s not up on Moon Base Q rooting out paedophle Clangers.

[Disciple of Fate]

It wasn't a red wave, but GoP votes in 2022 still outnumbered Dem votes, hence them flipping the House. No such thing as a sure thing here.

[herzlos]

Jul 2, 2024 7:52:06 GMT -5 mdgv2 said:

Honestly? I think you’d have a hard time convincing them it’s real when he does inevitably pass away, and he’s not up on Moon Base Q rooting out paedophle Clangers.

True, you could presumably keep them going with years of deepfake videos from a bunker.

I was thinking that there'd be some serious grift money involved in Trumps funeral, with fans paying a fortune for commemorative tat and Maralago becoming some kind of Graceland style resort.

But then it occurred to me that they can probably get away with the huge funeral, grift, shrine and then still get them worshipping him from hiding since clearly the death was faked in order to give him cover to drain the swamp. He's in superb health so it won't be a surprise when he's still "going" at 150 years old.

[mdgv2]

Well, his kids all seem to be doofuses, so depends whether their naked greed exceeds their competence. I mean, that’s not stopped him, but his kids aren’t him.

Wonder if Q is still going with its abject and obvious drivel?

[Peregrine]

Jul 2, 2024 6:35:40 GMT -5 Haighus said:

I dunno, Trump has a significant personal cult that a different candidate may not be able to harness effectively enough to win.

This. Remember that margins of victory are small, it doesn't take a huge swing in voter turnout to decide the election. If Trump's cult of personality stays home then the republicans probably lose and whoever replaces him isn't going to have that same level of appeal to the cult. DeSantis tried to be Trump and was a humiliating failure, MTG/Boebert/etc only get attention because they attached themselves to Trump, and whatever less-insane candidate the party leadership wants to nominate to reassert control over the party isn't going to get any of the fanatics. They'll still want to do all of the horrible things but I think it would take longer than the current election cycle for them to rebuild enough of a base to be able to make a serious attempt at it.

[Disciple of Fate]

I don't think you have to worry about the fanatics, I think you have to worry about the 'moderates'. It could be a relative repeat of 2016, the cult wasn't fully off the ground, but at least he 'wasn't Hillary'. What's the risk of 'at least they aren't Biden' if someone else suddenly became the candidate? Would that person also drive turnout against themselves like Trump does?

I think the DeSantis comparison is also a bit shaky, because the real deal was still in the running. We don't know what the cult will do once Trump is not an option.

[Haighus]

I'm certainly not claiming it would be plain sailing for the Dems if Trump died tomorrow, but I very much don't think it would be a guarantee that a successor could ride his coattails into the White House. There are scenarios where enough of his core stay home to lose them the race.

Jul 2, 2024 10:37:12 GMT -5 Disciple of Fate said:

It wasn't a red wave, but GoP votes in 2022 still outnumbered Dem votes, hence them flipping the House. No such thing as a sure thing here.

Midterms typically go against the party of the incumbent president though and the distribution of seats up for grabs favoured the Republicans, so the GOP underperformed even by their own recent standards, nevermind getting a red wave.

[Peregrine]

Jul 3, 2024 0:55:53 GMT -5 Disciple of Fate said:

I don't think you have to worry about the fanatics, I think you have to worry about the 'moderates'.

In the long run maybe but in the short term the "moderates" alone can't win the election. Even with the cult's support Trump is facing an uphill battle (though not nearly enough of one to get complacent!), take away that support and Biden wins easily. And I think a lot of that cult is very much a cult of personality around Trump specifically. His brand of politics-as-team-sport campaigning hits an emotional reaction about "owning the libs" that no other candidate so far has managed to duplicate. They either faceplant trying like DeSantis or they're another zero-energy empty suit like whatever supposed moderate candidate the party leadership tries to run. If Trump isn't out there having rallies and giving that emotional energy a lot of the cult is going to stay home because it isn't fun anymore.

It could be a relative repeat of 2016, the cult wasn't fully off the ground, but at least he 'wasn't Hillary'.

I don't think 2016 is a very good comparison. The situation was completely different back then, we were coming off eight years of stable government preceded by a republican administration whose biggest failure (the wars) was continued by the democrats anyway. It was easy to think things can't be that bad, that Trump wasn't ideal but neither was Bush and we survived that. But now it's been very clearly revealed what is at stake, that even if Trump himself is gone the party is still owned by the Russians, SCOTUS has crossed lines that were unthinkable back in 2016, and the republicans would really prefer if we just didn't have elections anymore. And I don't think there's enough time for Trump's replacement to build any trust that he is anything more than a continuation of Trump.

(And yeah, some of us were absolutely raising the alarm about Trump back then. If dakka still allowed politics I'd be going through old threads and dropping "told you so" comments everywhere. The above is just the point of view of the "anyone but Hillary" crowd.)

What's the risk of 'at least they aren't Biden' if someone else suddenly became the candidate?

Pretty minimal. We saw what the republican party tried to run in their primaries and I don't think any of them have any chance of filling that moderate role. DeSantis is a clown, Haley is a black woman and unelectable, and everyone else was desperately hoping to turn 1% of the vote into a Fox News gig. Biden isn't great but I don't think his negatives are anywhere near bad enough to get people to vote for those clowns, especially since a lot of the dislike of Biden is coming from left of him and those votes are never going republican.

Now, if it was still 2020 and the party had years to prepare for the election this would be a danger. But if Trump gives us an October surprise and chokes on a hamberder none of the people with any name recognition can take the "at least he's not Biden" role and nobody who could take it has the name recognition to try.

Would that person also drive turnout against themselves like Trump does?

Less so, but I think the loss in anti-Trump turnout would be much less than the loss of MAGA cultists. There's still enough reasons to vote against a party that very much aligned itself with Trump even if Trump himself is no longer running, especially since whoever the republicans nominate would have to market himself as Trump 2.0 to have any chance of holding on to the cult.

[Disciple of Fate]

Jul 3, 2024 3:12:42 GMT -5 Peregrine said:

I think those are very good points and I hope you're right.

The only thing I disagree with is the part about what has been revealed to be at stake, as the GoP still managed to flip the House despite this reveal. Turnout might be high enough to carry Dems every 4 years for the President, but the stakes sure didn't seem to turn the midterms into a Dem victory.