EnsignRedshirt [he/him]
Granted it’s unlikely we’ll ever see anyone like him again, but I think it’s worth noting that nothing has changed about the electoral system that would prevent someone taking a similarly unorthodox path. “Trump vibes” isn’t going to be a problem if someone is actually doing the Trump playbook properly. No one in the media or political establishment wanted Trump in the first place, and they all had to eat shit in 2016 when he single-handedly took over the GOP. Someone else could do it again if they were brazen enough.
Trump isn’t a genius, he just happened to stumble into a way to win the rock-paper-scissors game against the establishment civility and norms fetishists. They haven’t changed or learned anything in the last 8 years, and it’s unlikely they’ll smarten up this time around, especially if he loses again. The core vulnerability is still there. The game still depends on people following the rules, and if someone else comes along who doesn’t care about those rules, they’ll be able to do the same thing.
US electoralism is still a huge cargo cult joke that deserves no better than Trump, is what I’m saying.
Last night was really helpful for cleansing my twitter feed. General consensus was obviously that Trump ate shit, but you could tell from the comments who was watching the debate to hear what the candidates were saying vs who was there just to cheer on Harris and/or see Trump fail.
One of the minor but notable differences I’ve noticed between Canadian electoralism and American is that there’s very little room in American discourse for just being a hater. It seems like you have to pick a side, and if you say anything bad about one side then you must necessarily be supportive of the other side.
In Canada, we have the same two mainstream neoliberal parties that are the only ones who ever form government, but then there are several other parties and interest groups that have legitimate amounts of support and some representation in the legislature. If you say you hate Trudeau, there are too many possible angles you might be coming from for me to make any assumptions. You could be a conservative, an NDP/Green supporter, a Quebec nationalist, an indigenous person, anyone from BC or Alberta, the list goes on. It’s true of any Canadian politician, party, or interest group, so you can freely shit on anyone and everyone without people being able to assume your specific political leanings.
In Canada, someone like Hasan would be able to be like “Boy, that debate sure was a pile of dogshit” and proceed to roast each candidate on the merits, but in the US the algorithm needs you to declare or else it presumably shunts you into the unserious crank category.
lmao and there’s nothing they could do because he wouldn’t actually be revealing classified information. He’d be an absolute legend if he gave up on winning and just tried to do as much damage as he could on the way out. Come on, Teflon Don, let the spite take over. Go down swinging. You might not be president again, but you can make your enemies’ lives harder.
It’s amazing that they were still teaching cursive when I was in school in the 90s. They had elementary school kids who had never seen a fountain pen in their lives learning two different kinds of writing for no reason whatsoever. As a kid you’re just like “I guess we doing cursive now” but it had to be embarrassing to be a teacher, who has also never used a fountain pen, trying to explain why anyone would ever need or even want to write in cursive.
“Hamas. Hamas could end this tomorrow. Hamas could say (unintelligible) and done period.”
- President Joe Biden
“Go woke, go broke”
proceeds to list the most successful games of the last ten years
Trump attended as many primary debates as Biden did. The difference is that the RNC actually held debates, because they were running a competitive process. The DNC just backed Biden as a matter of course. No consultation, no attempt to present options to voters, not even a token attempt at an open discussion. The primary was a procedural formality. That is what a coronation looks like. Trump, despite his many, many flaws, put himself forward and won the Republican primary. Not attending the debates was a dick move, but given his popularity with Republican voters, and his overwhelming victory at the end of the day, I find it unlikely that it would make a difference. Hell, there’s an argument that it might have hurt his chances.
I’m just saying that Walz’s position that the Democrats are a functioning party while the GOP is a cult rings a bit hollow. The DNC unwaveringly supported Biden as he was slurring his words and falling down stairs until he eventually quit due to not wanting to suffer an embarrassing loss. The GOP had their shit together while the Democrats were scrambling to replace their candidate. The fact that they seem to have avoided catastrophe doesn’t change the fact that they were the ones who steered themselves into catastrophe in the first place. A little humility wouldn’t be misplaced.