US Politics: Happy Anniversary.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

8 hours ago, Makk said:

He has said plenty of stupid things (magnets don't work underwater) and immoral things (as a president I have immunity for everything even killing people) but his voters don't seem to care. The rest of the republican party has been just as stupid and disfunctional. The only hope is that the economy improves. 

His voters do care, they mostly love the crazy immoral shit he says. But they were never a realistic population for Democrats to grab. A Biden victory comes from mobilized Democratic voters and independents. But those voters were never mobilized for Biden, they were mobilized against Trump. And I think they will be again once their denial wears off, reality sets in, and the fear takes over.

But it ain't a given. We can make a difference in that respect. If you know someone who says they're not going to vote, or the two parties are the same, etc, try to get them to appreciate the real difference in the two outcomes. Soberly and compassionately, get the fear inside of them. Because it may indeed be close, and we need all the votes we can get.

[TormundsWoman]

21 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

sometimes he's incoherent.

What do you mean “sometimes”?

[TormundsWoman]

2 hours ago, Jace, Extat said:

So I watched his victory speech. 

We're in trouble. The motherfucker looks good. Y'know, for him. And when his opponent is, well... 

Also, he's gotten better at this. He opened up by calling for unity between Democrats and Republicans, talking up his opponents instead of tearing them down. It's a little like watching a snake sing a birthday song, but I'll be goddamned if he ain't being GRACIOUS in triumph. 

I had to go smoke a cigarette.

At one point he was having a discussion with his dead mother-in-law and... it went over better than you'd think. He's somehow managed to maintain his manic energy but learned how to stick to talking points and prescribed attitudes. Real fucking problem!

He didn't shriek or shake or scream. His cadence was steady. Calm, except for when he wanted to get a little excited. 

I hadn't heard him speak in so long, it's actually disturbing.

Of course he's still spouting lies. He doesn't want unity, we all know that. But his bit about election interference was actually pretty short.

He stated that he's gonna get Putin and Zelensky in a room and end that war = he's gonna stop aid and lean on Ukraine hard.

Says Israel would not have been attacked if he was still president, blamed Iran = Full backing of Israel

He's got his boogeyman in Iran. Call backs to his travel ban. 

He invited a guy dressed like a wall up on stage and, again, it's all in purpose of a hideous design but... I mean, can you imagine Joe Biden picking someone out of the crowd to join him on stage? No Democrat has that kind of stage presence, and Trump just does.

God, I'd hoped he'd be a dribbling moron by now but he's grown as a political advertiser, not diminished. 

FUCK!!!

I was curious myself but couldn’t do it. Thank you for providing summary.

[Consigliere]

Trump is a few years younger than Biden but he looks decrepit to me. Of the two, Biden looks the younger and healthier and sounds way more coherent. Trump still mostly spouts incoherent nonsense too from what I've seen - doing so loudly and obnoxiously doesn't make it any better. I seem to recall that during the last Dem primaries, Sanders supporters were convinced that 'dementia' Joe would be made to look foolish in a debate but that didn't happen. Then, when Biden won the nomination, the piss-their-pants lefties were convinced that 'energetic' Trump would wipe the floor with 'dementia\sleepy' Joe but that also didn't happen. Weird how some progressives seem so intent on parroting the talking points of the far right.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

18 minutes ago, TormundsWoman said:

What do you mean “sometimes”?

Well, it's all relative. Sometimes he's incoherent even for people who love his rants.

[fionwe1987]

Trump rallies were always places Trump looked good. He works his crowd, and they go wild, and this was something neither Clinton nor Biden was ever able to pull off (Sanders and Warren could, but that's a different story). 

Don't judge Trump's chance of success when he's playing just to his base. See what happens if/when he shares the stage with Biden, or when he's trying to address folks who don't have a hardon for him already. Because just that part of the population just can't elect him to office. 

Found this to be a good explanation of Trump's appeal:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/14/opinion/trump-voters-iowa-caucus.html?searchResultPosition=2

Quote

Cheryl Sharp, a 47-year-old sales associate who was among the many Iowans turned away from a filled-to-capacity Trump rally last month, sounded pretty confident she knew why Donald Trump was so appealing to many voters. For her and many others, she said, his most important quality was strength: He had the fortitude to keep the country safe, avoid new wars and ensure the economy hummed along.

“You want someone strong, globally, so that it creates mutual respect with other countries, and maybe a little bit of fear,” she told me. “Yes, it’s true, not everyone likes him. It’s good not to be liked. Being strong is better.” Sharp readily conceded that not everything Trump said was great, but she saw that as part of the right personality to be president. “You gotta be a little crazy, maybe, to make sure other countries respect and fear us,” she said. “And he can run the country like a business, and they will leave him alone.”

Three days later, inside a Trump rally in New Hampshire, Scott Bobbitt and his wife, Heather, also brought up Trump’s strength. “He commands respect and fear around the world,” Scott Bobbitt told me. “Many people may be driven by fear of him because he’ll do what he says he’s going to do, and he’s not afraid to talk about it. And I think that that’s very powerful. That does protect our country, and he’ll stand up instead of rolling over.”

I first began attending Trump rallies eight years ago, to try to better understand a candidate who was then being described as a joke — someone with little to no chance of winning the Republican nomination, let alone the presidency — and came away struck by his mix of charisma and powerful command of audiences.

Rather than the bumbling celebrity I expected, I encountered a politician laying the groundwork for a powerful political realignment around subjects too readily brushed aside by the bipartisan establishment in Washington, such as the loss of manufacturing in the United States; those left behind by globalization and trade, especially trade with China; the legacy of the Iraq war and U.S. involvement in foreign wars in general; and, of course, immigration.

I recently started going to Trump rallies and following his supporters’ online political conversations once again, to try to better understand something else: his base, and specifically the question of authoritarianism and the American voter.

The authoritarian label has been attached to Trump by critics for years, especially after he sought to overturn the 2020 election results, which culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. I have studied and written about authoritarianism for years, and I think it’s important to pay attention to the views and motivations of voters who support authoritarian politicians, even when these politicians are seen by many as threats to the democratic order.

My curiosity isn’t merely intellectual. Around the world, these politicians are not just getting elected democratically; they are often retaining enough popular support after a term — or two or three — to get re-elected. Polls strongly suggest that Trump has a reasonable chance of winning another term in November. And he has clearly retained his hold on the Republican Party base: His Republican challengers either seem to be angling to be his vice president or are struggling to climb in the polls.

What I wanted to understand was, why? Why Trump? Even if these voters were unhappy with President Biden, why not a less polarizing Republican, one without indictments and all that dictator talk? Why does Trump have so much enduring appeal?

In my talks with more than 100 voters, no one mentioned the word “authoritarian.” But that was no surprise — many everyday people don’t think in those terms. Focusing solely on these labels can miss the point.

Authoritarian leaders project qualities that many voters — not just Trump voters — admire: strength, a sense of control, even an ends-justify-the-means leadership style. Our movie-hero presidents, Top Gun pilots and crusading lawyers often take matters into their own hands or break the rules in ways that we cheer. No, they are not classic authoritarians jailing opponents, but they have something in common with Trump: They are seen as having special or singular strengths, an “I alone can fix it” power.

What I heard from voters drawn to Trump was that he had a special strength in making the economy work better for them than Biden has, and that he was a tough, “don’t mess with me” absolutist, which they see as helping to prevent new wars. His supporters also see him as an authentic strongman who is not a typical politician, and Trump sells that message very well to his base.

In New Hampshire, Jackie Fashjian made the case to me that during Trump’s presidency, “there weren’t any active wars going on except for Afghanistan, which he did not start. He started no new wars. Our economy was great. Our gas prices were under 2 bucks a gallon. It’s just common sense to me. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

At the same rally, Debbie Finch leaped to her feet when Trump walked into the arena, and like many around us, she started filming. Finch defies stereotypes of Trump supporters: She’s Black and is concerned with racism, which she says greatly affects her life and that of her children. She doesn’t deny there are racists among Trump’s supporters, but as far as she’s concerned, that goes for Democrats, too. She told me she supports Trump because the economy was better under him. She doesn’t care about Trump’s indictments; the justice system has been derailing Black men forever, she says, and she predicts more and more minority voters will cast their ballots for him. (Trump does poll higher among minorities than past Republican presidents in the modern era and his current competitors for the nomination.)

Trump’s vulgar language, his penchant for insults (“Don’t call him a fat pig,” he said about Chris Christie) and his rhetoric about political opponents (promising to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”) are seen as signs of authenticity and strength by his supporters. All the politicians say things like that in private, countless Trump supporters asserted to me and argued that it’s just Trump who’s strong and honest enough to say it out loud — for them, a sign that he’s honest.

Voter after voter told me that they think Biden is too weak and too old to be president. They talk about him with attack lines frequently used by Trump, saying that he’s senile, falling down stairs, losing his train of thought while talking and so on. Biden, Trump grimly warned the crowd in Iowa, “can’t put two sentences together and he’s responsible for negotiations on nuclear weapons in World War III.”

Nationally, polls show that voters are more concerned about Biden’s age than Trump’s. If 2024 comes down to Biden versus Trump, the politicians will be 81 and 78, respectively, the oldest matchup ever.

Polls also show that voters believe that Trump would do a better job than Biden on the economy, foreign policy and immigration. It was Trump’s perceived strength, in contrast with Biden’s perceived weakness, that was the common theme that tied it all together for his supporters.

Take foreign policy. Many Trump supporters told me that had Trump been president, the war in Ukraine wouldn’t have happened because he would have been strong enough to be feared by Vladimir Putin or smart enough to make a deal with him, if necessary. Neither would Hamas have dared attack Israel, a few added. Their proof was that during Trump’s presidency, these wars indeed did not happen. Of course, the more relevant question is whether these wars would have happened during a second Trump term — a counterfactual that can’t be proved or disproved.

Projecting strength and being seen as authentic are common themes among other leaders whom political scientists would call “competitive authoritarians.” In their regimes, many of the basic tenets of liberal democracy are violated, but elections, largely free of widespread fraud, are regularly held. Many political scientists place Narendra Modi of India (his party recently won major victories in state elections, and a third term is possible), Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey (on his third term as president, after three stints as prime minister) and Viktor Orban of Hungary (in his fourth consecutive term) in this category.

Like many of these right-wing populists, Trump leans heavily on the message that he alone is strong enough to keep America peaceful and prosperous in a scary world. Right after his recent landslide re-election, Orban said his party had won despite everyone being against them, and now he would ensure that Hungary would be “strong, rich and green.” In Iowa, Trump praised Orban himself before telling a cheering crowd: “For four straight years, I kept America safe. I kept Israel safe. I kept Ukraine safe, and I kept the entire world safe.”

As he spoke such words at various rallies, the crowds often interrupted him with applause and cheering. From another politician, such claims might have sounded so implausibly grandiose as to fall flat. But from Trump, these statements often resulted in the crowds leaping to their feet (actually, some rallygoers never sat down) and interrupting him with applause and cheering.

That’s charisma. Charisma is an underrated aspect of political success — and it’s not necessarily a function of political viewpoint. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama oozed it, for example, and so does Trump.

Charisma is so central to politics that Max Weber, a founder of sociology, included charismatic authority (along with legal authority, as in republics and democracies; and traditional authority, as in feudalism or monarchy) as one of three types of power people see as legitimate. Charismatic leaders, Weber wrote, “have a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men,” and is sought as a leader, especially when people feel the times are troubled.

So what about democracy, then? I pressed many Trump supporters about the events around Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol. I didn’t encounter a single outright supporter of what happened, but many people explained the events away. Increasingly separate information environments and our fractured media ecology shape the way people view that day.

Some Trump supporters told me that whatever happened was carried out by a fringe faction that did not represent Trump’s base. Didn’t some Black Lives Matter protesters get carried away and even damage small businesses owned by Black people?, Jackie Fashjian said to me. Debbie Finch asked me whether Kamala Harris should be responsible for everything bad done during Black Lives Matter protests.

Many also didn’t trust the government or traditional media’s telling of what happened on Jan. 6. “I’m not concerned with Jan. 6,” Finch said. “I don’t trust our government. I don’t trust anything they’re saying. They’ve been doing this to Black people for so long, railroading them, so they have zero credibility. So I don’t even care about it, and I don’t want to hear about Jan. 6.”

Others, like Hunter Larkner, a young man who said he was a great fan of Elon Musk and used Twitter and YouTube for doing his research, said he was shocked when he first heard about the events of Jan. 6. But as he looked into it, he decided it must have been entrapment — that authorities deliberately allowed the rampage in the Capitol to happen.

Cheryl Sharp, too, told me that she doesn’t worry about all the talk of Trump being a dictator. For her, biased mainstream media is misrepresenting him. “He was making the point that he’d use executive orders on Day 1, like the others do — executive orders bypass Congress, but that’s how it’s done these days,” she said. “He was being sarcastic, not saying he’d be a real dictator.”

It’s easy to see why Trump’s political message can override concerns about the process of democracy for many. What’s a bit of due process overstepped here, a trampled emoluments clause there, when all politicians are believed to be corrupt and fractured information sources pump very different messages about reality?

Politicians projecting strength at the expense of the rules of liberal democracy isn’t a new phenomenon in the United States, or the world. Thomas Jefferson worried about it. So did Plato. Perhaps acknowledging that Trump’s appeal isn’t that mysterious can help people grapple with its power.

 

[kissdbyfire]

26 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

 “He commands respect and fear around the world,”

One of the most amazing and mind-boggling aspects of Trumpmania is his fan base’s utter disconnect from reality. I’m sorry, but these people are idiots and they can’t think for themselves, they simply accept everything he says w/o thinking about any of it. I mean, the above is exactly what I mean. They are repeating what he says; the truth is Trump is a joke and is seen as such most everywhere. 
 

ETA: a very dangerous joke, sure, but a joke nonetheless.

Edited January 16 by kissdbyfire

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

One of the most amazing and mind-boggling aspects of Trumpmania is his fan base’s utter disconnect from reality. I’m sorry, but these people are idiots and they can’t think for themselves, they simply accept everything he says w/o thinking about any of it. I mean, the above is exactly what I mean. They are repeating what he says; the truth is Trump is a joke and is seen as such most everywhere. 
 

ETA: a very dangerous joke, sure, but a joke nonetheless.

Two things.

If they are idiots - so what? They vote. If you're automatically dismissing everyone with below average intelligence from voting for you you have ruled out 50% of the population.

They are not idiots - they are virtue signaling. This is no different than anyone else in various authoritarian regimes - you absolutely repeat the party line in public and around other people you don't know. And if you want to survive in authoritarian regimes you'd better learn how to do that when you need to.

[kissdbyfire]

Just now, Kalbear said:

Two things.

If they are idiots - so what?

So nothing, it was an observation - nothing more, nothing less.

Just now, Kalbear said:

They vote. If you're automatically dismissing everyone with below average intelligence from voting for you you have ruled out 50% of the population.

Huh? Where did I say they shouldn’t vote? Or anything to do w/ any of that? Again, it was an observation, that’s all. 

Just now, Kalbear said:

They are not idiots - they are virtue signaling.

How do you know they’re not idiots? They could be idiots who are virtue signaling. Or they could just be idiots. Now, if you’re telling me you know this couple and know for a fact they’re not idiots, I’ll take it back and stand corrected. 

Just now, Kalbear said:

This is no different than anyone else in various authoritarian regimes - you absolutely repeat the party line in public and around other people you don't know. And if you want to survive in authoritarian regimes you'd better learn how to do that when you need to.

So, are they practicing for a 2nd Trump term? 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

21 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

How do you know they’re not idiots? They could be idiots who are virtue signaling. Or they could just be idiots. Now, if you’re telling me you know this couple and know for a fact they’re not idiots, I’ll take it back and stand corrected. 

I think it's more the case that they are seeing what they want to see and hearing what they want to hear.

All humans are susceptible to having our biases confirmed, especially moral narratives that satisfy us emotionally. But the MAGA crowd has had their brains warped from literal decades of pandering and demagoguery. They're not stupid, or if they are, they've been rendered stupid by their self-flattering feedback loop info bubbles. 

And yes, there is also tribal signaling on display as well. The rank and file are nothing if not good team players.

[Darryk]

Trump tested the resilience of the American political system to its limit last time and I fear if he wins again he'll break it.

Last time he was surrounded by vanilla Republicans who mostly kept him in check but I wouldn't be surprised if he surrounds himself with crypto fascists this time round.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, Darryk said:

Trump tested the resilience of the American political system to its limit last time and I fear if he wins again he'll break it.

Last time he was surrounded by vanilla Republicans who mostly kept him in check but I wouldn't be surprised if he surrounds himself with crypto fascists this time round.

Not crypto fascists.  Fascists.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

So nothing, it was an observation - nothing more, nothing less.

Huh? Where did I say they shouldn’t vote? Or anything to do w/ any of that? Again, it was an observation, that’s all. 

I didn't say you said they shouldn't vote. I said you're dismissing their vote by calling them stupid. You think they're gonna vote for someone who calls them idiots?

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

How do you know they’re not idiots? They could be idiots who are virtue signaling. Or they could just be idiots. Now, if you’re telling me you know this couple and know for a fact they’re not idiots, I’ll take it back and stand corrected. 

I've linked previously to studies that indicate that they are not idiots. You keep believing without evidence that they are.

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

So, are they practicing for a 2nd Trump term? 

They assume, correctly, that in a loyalist authoritarian system the most valuable property is to be shown to be loyal. That is what the Republican party is right now, and it is what will be the case in the US if he wins. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

One of the most amazing and mind-boggling aspects of Trumpmania is his fan base’s utter disconnect from reality. I’m sorry, but these people are idiots and they can’t think for themselves, 

Nothing to be sorry for. They're even dumber than we'd like to say. The scary part is that there's so many of them.

52 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Trump tested the resilience of the American political system to its limit last time and I fear if he wins again he'll break it.

As stupid as he is he's like the raptors in the original JP testing the fences. 

[mormont]

2 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

One of the most amazing and mind-boggling aspects of Trumpmania is his fan base’s utter disconnect from reality.

Rationality, rather. 

When Trump supporters talk about his 'strength', they're not talking about facts. They're talking about emotions. Their emotional reaction to him, specifically. That's what they mean. Sure, the reality is he's a ludicrous blowhard who only talks tough and picks on the weak. But that's enough. 

[sologdin]

He's somehow managed to maintain his manic energy but learned how to stick to talking points and prescribed attitudes

the hypothesis for falsification is therefore whether acting like a regular candidate cools the fervor of magaphiliac expression. my suspicion is that the magaphiliac arises from abject lumpenization and has adopted facile identity politics on the way out. say what you want about the tenets of magaphilia, at least it's an ethos?

[TheKitttenGuard]

I election reminder that Iowa is wierd since it is a caucus. It is a test of a dedication in many ways, and think we seeking a narrative in that.

I think Trump will be the nominee and it will mean I will be, for the first time, voting to re-elect a Democratic President. That is the only logical conclusion to this. Then again, I thought it was logical to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 since Scalia is dead yet not many followed that.

The focus needs to be House and Senate and what people think Biden/Harris should have.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Even with Biden's poor approval numbers, he is still about even or slightly shaded by Trump in most surveys now (although admittedly the swing state picture isnt looking too rosy). Hardly an insurmountable task in front of the Democrats, although I suggest they make peace with the choice they have and start organizing. All this hand-wringing is not useful (I'm calling out those with power, not folks on this board). If anything, focus on retaking teh House for sure, otherwise it'll be a long 4 years.

[Altherion]

12 hours ago, Makk said:

He has said plenty of stupid things (magnets don't work underwater) and immoral things (as a president I have immunity for everything even killing people) but his voters don't seem to care. The rest of the republican party has been just as stupid and disfunctional. The only hope is that the economy improves. 

He has said plenty of things in the past, but people react more strongly to things that are more recent. His most fervent supporters either don't care or outright agree with him, but he needs many more people than that to win the general election.

The economy is a strange issue: according to the numbers the government is releasing, the behavior of the market and the statements of most economists, it's doing fine... but of course most people don't feel this is the case. It's not clear what it would take to turn that around.

[fionwe1987]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

I didn't say you said they shouldn't vote. I said you're dismissing their vote by calling them stupid. You think they're gonna vote for someone who calls them idiots?

Is Kissedbyfire a third party candidate, or Joe Biden's secret ASOIAF account?

Not sure why else they'd want anyone's vote...