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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Trump winning was a wake-up call, yes. But I would still have preferred a Hillary win, because that would imply we lived in a country that didn't need a wake-up call.
The good here isn't that Trump won. The good is what we did in response to the bad, which was Trump's win. Do not credit the tyrant for the revolution.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 15th 2018 at 9:37:16 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Some people want to see a silver lining because right now that's what they want is reassurance that despite everything there is some good news,I don't blame them when the news nothing but bad news constantly
But the silver lining is quite thin in this case,it might lead to the democrats taking the senate in 2020 making Trump's reign the shortlist in modern history,however Trump could win by the skin of his teeth,thus no silver lining and with something as uncertain as an election it's better to forgo the hope of a silver lining and be realistic
It's like how some people get annoyed by idealists
Edited by Ultimatum on Nov 15th 2018 at 8:42:37 AM
have a listen and have a link to my discord serverEdited by DrunkenNordmann on Nov 15th 2018 at 5:48:43 PM
We learn from history that we do not learn from historyMultiple analysts are seriously arguing that Texas COULD very well go blue in 2020.
And it's Trump's fault.
Donald Trump made the most polarizing and dogmatic conservatives in Texas much more vulnerable, with a significant number of regular Republican voters strongly associating these candidates with Trump, and as a result either voting for their Democratic rival, not voting in that race, or casting a protest vote for the Libertarian.
Less polarizing and less dogmatic conservative Republicans — Governor Greg Abbott, Glenn Hegar, the comptroller and George P. Bush, the land commissioner — won by margins (on average, 11.9 percent), that, according to Jones, “double or triple that of the more polarizing and dogmatic conservative Republicans.” Those farther to the extreme right — the lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, the attorney general, Ken Paxton and Sid Miller, the agricultural commissioner, won by an average of 4.9 percent.
Jones has strong views on the Trump effect in Texas: “Donald Trump is without a question a major liability for Texas Republicans.”
Trump, according to Jones, repels "key GOP constituencies such as college educated Anglo women and Anglo millennials and post-millennials, while simultaneously providing Democrats with a banner around which to mobilize turnout, especially among Latinos and younger voters."
What about the big question: is Texas becoming Democratic? Jones’s answer:
"It is premature to say that Texas is turning blue, but whereas four years ago its hue was dark red, today it is light pink. As long as President Trump is in the White House, Republicans in Texas can look forward to much tougher battles from higher quality and better funded Democratic challengers than they faced prior to 2018, as well as being required to do something that most Republican candidates have not had to do for years in Texas; actually work up a sweat in the fall."
Robert Stein, who is also a political scientist at Rice, pointed out in an email that the pro-Democratic trends in major Texas counties began well before Trump, although Trump has accelerated developments.
Stein uses graphics compiled by The Texas Tribune to make his point. In each major county, partisan voting patterns show Republicans on a steady downward path.
[...]
Richard Murray, a political scientist at the University of Houston, is bullish on Democratic prospects. The midterms demonstrated that "the metro v. rest-of-state gap widened hugely in Texas, with the big cities going overwhelmingly Democratic while suburban counties outside Austin, Houston, and Dallas/Ft Worth moved toward the Democrats. But non-metro counties stayed very Republican with very high turnout, enabling Cruz to eke out a narrow win."
That trend is likely to continue, Murray argued in an email:
"We had 8.3 million voters in 2018 (up from just 4.7 million in 2014). That should go over 10 million in 2020, giving statewide Democrats a good chance of carrying the state for president and winning the U.S. senate seat.
Not only will Democrats be competitive in 2020 but the party has, in Murray’s view, “a 50 percent-plus chance of taking the Texas House of Representatives, with major implications for the 2021 redistricting process.”"
I'm inclined to believe the GOP will still win Texas in 2020 but if I'm proven wrong, that will be absolutely devastating.
Trump might not even be the candidate in 2016. Remember, not his decision, if there is a challenger, the Republicans could decide to run someone else in the hope to get the stink off. After all, most REPUBLICAN voters don't approve of Trump.
Which is why it is so important to keep reminding everyone that Trump is just showing openly what the Republican party actually is.
Flipping TX is a stretch goal at best in 2020. Great if it happens, but if we're relying on it then we're already dead.
He'll be the nominee. I don't think a sitting president has ever been primaried. I mean, it would be sweet justice, but the GOP just isn't that self-conscious.
Edited by Cris_Meyers on Nov 15th 2018 at 11:24:18 AM
@Swanpride: Speaking as a Republican, I'm 98.7% sure that Trump will still be the Republican candidate.
Trump is unpopular, sure. And while he's unusually controversial even in his own party the vast majority of Republicans do at least tolerate him through gritted teeth.
It also wouldn't make be very smart for them to throw Trump under the bus. If they didn't nominate him I'm pretty sure he'd still be a candidate and that would just split the vote and screw them over. Plus, Trump won last time despite the odds, so why do something different?
Leviticus 19:34True. But any potential primary challenger is going to have to not only tap into all of that, but still then defeat Trump in the Republican primary. That's not including the fact that the challenger would be running against the incumbent President.
Then, if they win, they've probably just isolated not only the entire MAGA basket but probably a number of other Republicans as well. They'd be setting themselves up for failure.
And all that is assuming the Republican Party can actually summon up enough of a conscience to realize just what they've done and try to fix it by eliminating him the primaries. Probably the biggest longshot of them all, there.
I mean, Ronald Reagan was the second step on the ladder that led the Republican Party to Trump, so saying he's some kind of break with an imaginary Reagan legacy that left the Republican Party somewhere else is hogwash to begin with.
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.Reagan was worse than Trump. His policies were just as repellent, but he had a strong understanding of PR and human weakness that meant that he normalized everything terrible about his government. Reaganism became the baseline of American political discourse for an entire generation, in a way that Trumpism isn't even close to reaching. Trump, we can fight because he embodies our worst impulses while making a huge number of Americans feel genuinely ashamed. Reagan could never be fought — he was the Invincible Villain of American politics because he encouraged Americans to be corrupt and made them feel good about their own shortsightedness and greed.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Nov 15th 2018 at 1:07:53 PM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."@math972d
To be fair, Trump and Reagan actually didn't like each other back in the day.
Leviticus 19:34
The fact that they didn't like each other is largely irrelevant when both of them represent the same thing.
It's just that one of them was an efficient, masterful liar whose bigotry got thousands of American people killed, and the other one is Donald Trump.
Edited by math792d on Nov 15th 2018 at 7:07:27 PM
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

Edited by M84 on Nov 16th 2018 at 12:33:04 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised