The election’s over.
Maybe Biden takes office in seven weeks. Maybe one of Trump’s legal challeges gets traction.
For purposes of this post, I don’t know and don’t care.
Because the 2022 and 2024 campaigns have already begun.
The good news: without Trump, the Democrats are going to have to find someone to unify around. And it ain’t gonna be easy.
From New Republic – now, they have to try to focus on their own problems:
The coming weeks may see the reemergence in backrooms and boardrooms of the tensions that loomed over the 2020 Democratic primaries. Let us review the three power centers in the party as they existed then:
The new economy. Two titans of the finance world (Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer) sought to win the Democratic nomination by funding their own and various down-ballot candidacies. (Both would eventually back Biden.) There was also one impecunious primary candidate who had some original ideas about the tech world: Andrew Yang. The new economy provides wealth for so few people that it can never command the party’s rank and file. But it exercises a dizzying gravitational pull on its leaders.
Socialism. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were its candidates, the former in a doctrinal way (unions, benefits, income redistribution), the latter in a way adapted to strike more precisely at modern power relations (financial regulation, economic rights), which she denied was any form of socialism at all. Each was a more dire threat to the interests of people like Bloomberg and Steyer than anything the tax-cutting, deregulatory Republicans might produce. This is the great drama of the Democratic Party: They are the party of the 1 percent. They are also the party of expropriating the 1 percent.This is the great drama of the Democratic Party: They are the party of the 1 percent. They are also the party of expropriating the 1 percent.
Civil rights. The party’s glue is civil rights, broadly understood. Civil rights long meant looking out for the practical and principled interests of Black people—naturally a commitment on which cooperation with socialists is possible. But over the decades, civil rights has also become a regulatory and judicial system for advancing the interests of other groups, including immigrants (elite and mass), women executives, two-income gay couples, and lawyers—commitments more consistent with those of the Democrats’ plutocratic wing. The role of civil rights as reconciler-of-contradictions can be compared to that of anti-Communism in the tripartite Reagan coalition of the 1980s, which appealed in one way to Christians who thought the country ought to be more fraternal and in another to businessmen who thought it ought to be more rapacious.
Without a boogieman, can they boogie?
That’s the good news.
Now, the bad news: without Trump, the Republicans are going to have to find someone to unify around. It that ain’t gonna be easy.
The Trump “movement” is a lot like Ron Paul’s crowd, eight and 12 years ago – they pretty much came for a single personality, in whom a bunch of hot button issues coalesced; immigration, economic decay, identity politics. Like the Ron Paul crowd, they could easily disappear from the GOP for another generation.
Then there’s the remaining Tea Party, Reagan and even Chamber of Commerce Republicans – none of whom are big enough to put someone in the White House, all of whom are big enough to deny a nomination or scupper an election if they stay home.
The GOP needs a New Gingrich to articulate a vision that brings that throng together in time for midterms, when the reaction to the inevitable “progressive” overreach peaks.
Trump may not be around much longer, but his voters are still here and they have grown by 11,000,000 since 2016.
Democrats of all types consider the 74,000,000 Americans who voted for Trump this year as literally no better than Nazis. That is who will be the focus of their hatred for the next two years.
Trump gained voters among ALL the usual demographics except for white college educated males (I am in this group). The Dems are continuing down the road of being the party of the elite and the wannabe elite. Not good, long term.
Mitch – in online interactions (since I can’t go to the bar anymore. Or, church) what I’m reading/hearing is that there are plenty of R voters saying that they’re done after this election. Not in a “I lost, so I’m taking my ball and going home way” but more in a Charlie Brown “why would I keep trying to kick Lucy’s football” way.
In light of that, I really don’t think there’s much the R’s can do. And I’m not sure they care – they got elected again, so who cares about Trump or voting fraud? Are there any R’s fighting now at a state or federal level?
If there’s a single figure that I’ve come to seriously admire the work of the last year or so, that is Rick Grenell. But, I don’t see him as someone to rally people around.
Final thought – having been a board member with a Chamber of Commerce, the C of C is about as conservative as a Pride parade. At least here in MN.
The Trump “movement” is a lot like Ron Paul’s crowd…
Man, all we need now is a Kevin Williamson article slamming those Deplorables. The Emery Collective has already posted a NR article telling Trump “how can we miss you if you won’t go away”.
Maybe a letter to Senate and House leaders is in order. Given Biden’s viewpoints as expressed by his nominees, I think it would be good to gently say some places where we believe Americans can agree.
1. We welcome immigrants, but the nation has the right to do background and health checks on new immigrants so we’re not importing crime and disease. The nation has the responsibility to expel those who commit serious crimes as well.
2. Even pro-choice Americans ought to be repulsed by the notion of taxing their pro-life neighbors to pay for abortion. No funds for Planned Parenthood or other abortion providers.
3. To make every possible vote count, we need to work to exclude votes from false sources. That means we need to make sure voter rolls are screened, and work to make sure that adequate poll watchers are in place–and that counting does not proceed in the wee hours when alertness is reduced and poll watchers go home.
4. The Constitution has a fixed meaning as written, and if we agree on this, we can avoid all kinds of strife and uncertainty.
etc., etc.,
I think at a certain level, we need to “distribute” leadership and start to build the party around ideas. I think it’s do-able to present a reasonable, yet conservative, viewpoint that even a lot of liberals will be able to buy into. And then the left will need to pick off not one leader, but multiple leaders, to hamstring us. And you know they’ll try.
Mitch is correct.
The party of acceptance and tolerance always has to have a bogeyman to gin up fear in and rake in big bucks from their useful idiots. The left wing ministry of propaganda is seeing their ratings drop off the cliff and they will only get worse.
smh;
I am very impressed with Richard Grenell and since Trump got more that 28% of the LBGQT vote. I think Grenell could build unity and may draw a significant percentage of Democrats to vote for him, due to their homophobic guilt. Remember that Obama got millions of votes from white closet racists, due to their black guilt.
The Trump “movement” is a lot like Ron Paul’s crowd, eight and 12 years ago – they pretty much came for a single personality, in whom a bunch of hot button issues coalesced; immigration, economic decay, identity politics. Like the Ron Paul crowd, they could easily disappear from the GOP for another generation.
I doubt this. Economic decay is going to be an even bigger issue going forward. And identity politics aren’t going away, either. Trump championed these issues because he recognized they were issues requiring attention. I don’t like Trump or his personality, but he did something exceedingly rare — he actually made an effort to keep his promises, despite unrelenting pressure from the left and people who were ostensibly on his own side slow rolling and sandbagging him.
I also think a Venn diagram of the Tea Party and Trump supporters would have a hell of a lot of overlap, primarily because the slow rollers and sandbaggers who hampered Trump were, in the main, the same people who used the Tea Party folks to get their sinecures back in 2010 and 2014, without ever actually doing much to change things. This show has been in reruns since 1988.
Mr. D wrote:
I don’t like Trump or his personality
Interesting from listening to the MSM, L wing pundits, and #nevertrumpers (like Jonah Goldberg & David French), the only people who support Trump are lickspittles who worship Trump and believe that he can do no wrong.
Interesting from listening to the MSM, L wing pundits, and #nevertrumpers (like Jonah Goldberg & David French), the only people who support Trump are lickspittles who worship Trump and believe that he can do no wrong.
Nuance is a bitch, Max.
The GOP flipped another Cali house seat into their column.
I think the message of the 2020 election is a rejection of Trump, but not Trumpism. This is not a message that will be well received by the Republicans or the Democrats. The establishment of both parties believe that it is impossible to separate Trump from Trumpism.
MO, another explanation if you choose to accept or even believe it, is that the fraudulent votes in whatever form were only intended to defeat Trump. All down-race items were left blank.
It’s very likely Trump will remain a totemic adversary — he’s not going quietly and nor will his family (although perhaps fighting some felony convictions will keep them busy for a while). And the Democratic left has to reckon with the facts and voter data: their message bombed not only in rural America, but also underperformed in cities and with minorities, and they are responsible for the Republicans taking more state legislatures and having the upper hand in redistricting yet again.
Emery, the only people that are going to be fighting felony charges, along with election tampering, falsified results and treason, are Democrats. Trump is just likely to make some massive arrests and hold trials in military courts and tribunals.
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“Maybe Biden takes office in seven weeks. Maybe one of Trump’s legal challeges gets traction.
For purposes of this post, I don’t know and don’t care.
Because the 2022 and 2024 campaigns have already begun.”
That is the stupidest shit I’ve ever read coming from a neo-con, and considering the stupid shit neo-cons have said, that’s something.
No? Let’s translate that steaming dump into English.
“The fix is in; maybe it will work, maybe not. It’s not important because the next shit show is right around the corner and we have to order our tickets. Let’s take a look at the acts they have lined up!”
No wonder our kids have lost their minds; and hey, maybe they’re the sane ones after all.
Suddenly, tearing statues of America’s founders down makes all the sense in the world. Not because they were bad guys, but because their story has run it’s course. We need room for new statues.
Maybe future Northern continentals will wander the ruins of Washington, D.C. and ask aloud “wonder what happened to these people?”
“ We welcome immigrants, but the nation has the right to do background and health checks on new immigrants so we’re not importing crime and disease. The nation has the responsibility to expel those who commit serious crimes as well.”
We have a growing mob of drug addicted, mentally ill people living under tarps and shitting on the sidewalk; 25% of public school students don’t make it through grade 12, and 30% of those that do are incapable of solving simple math problems. So hell yeah, we need to welcome and encourage more people to come here. Especially from 3rd world shit holes.
Expecting those valued newcomers to bring something of value with them to the party is just nuts. As long as they don’t shit in the punch bowl and rape the hostess they’re good to go.
I read today an excellent analogy to 21st century America. The radio telescope in Arecibo, PR has collapsed.
The accompanying pictures illustrate a testimonial to American technological prowess that has gone to rot. Evidently, one of the support cables failed a year ago, but no one was too concerned about it; they certainly didn’t do anything about it.
Now another cable has gone and huge section has collapsed. It’s so bad they think the whole damn thing will fall if they touch it.
The people in charge say they think it was a manufacturing flaw; I shit you not. It was built in 1960.
Doesn’t matter, really. The Chinese have built a bigger, better radio telescope already.
The Arecibo RT has been underfunded for decades. That is because it is obsolete, the NSF had better things to spend it money on. There were two cable breaks in the summer and fall of this year. After the damage was assessed, the decision was made, at the NSF, to decommission the telescope rather than spend a LOT of money on repairs. Before it could be decommissioned and dismantled, the dish collapsed.
This is not a good metaphor for the decline of American science & industry.
The Chinese are decades behind the US in the hard sciences. They stand on our shoulders, they educate their scientists in the US. Their scientific establishment partners with US and European institutions because unlike us, they do not have a hundred and fifty years of experience building, managing, and financing non-military technical projects.