The genie is out of the bottle, the die is cast, etc. We’re not going back to what was before.
I’d only put 60/40 odds on the 2028 election not being temporarily suspended due to a state of emergency.
I’d only put 60/40 odds on the 2028 election not being temporarily suspended due to a state of emergency.
If you think 60/40 is the right odds, you have some opportunities available - to make fake dollars, at least: https://manifold.markets/AndrewG/will-donald-trump-attempt-t...
I bet you could find more than a few people here to take the other side of 60/40 odds in a $100 bet.
Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term. It’s stunning. This is not a “I wouldn’t vote for a felon/rapist/whatever” type of red line that falls apart when you question it - they are universally against it. I sincerely think screwing with the election terms or dates to prolong Trump’s term is likely to cause immediate and shocking support evaporation. Enough to embolden Congress to do stuff, and he won’t have enough control over any armed agency to do anything to Congress.
I think that a Trump who is trying to avoid prosecution for $crimes is much more likely to throw his weight behind a GOP candidate in early 2028. Vance or whoever. That’s his best chance to stay out of jail (for prosecutions political or legitimate, doesn’t matter). After a few solid months of propping up another GOP candidate, Trump’s base will be even less rabid about him specifically. He’s going to be old news in late 2028.
If Trump doesn’t support another candidate in 2028, then I’d start to worry. I just don’t see it happening - the game theory very obviously says he must support a not-him candidate by early 2028, and doing that will make it even harder to pull off shenanigans.
I don’t want to argue against your lived experience, but somebody is buying all those hats and yard signs.
I just think it’s telling that all the rabid Trump supporters I know aren’t there. Zero of them want to see him on the ballot a fourth time or otherwise pull shenanigans.
I would expect him and his handlers to look to other authoritarian regimes to see how to safely have democratic votes without any chance of losing power.
But put a name there, and I guarantee you that they will immediately flip and claim that they have to support Trump, because the alternative is going to be literal communism or whatever.
They said the same thing on Jan 6, 2021. Trump supporters had a very negative visceral reaction to that day.
But on Jan 7, 2021 the propaganda machine started up again and minds began changing one by one. Today, the very people who were running for their lives on Jan 6 are in support of officially teaching in schools that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats -- the very lie that cause the violence of the day, that caused so many to say "I do not support this". Four years later they voted for it again.
So when I hear tales of a Trump voter who is against something Trump has done, I just remember that they voted for him again after he caused an insurrection against the United States in an attempt to illegally overthrow a free and fair election.
If a voter can find their way to excusing that, they will find their way to excusing a third term. Here's how: "Yeah it's not ideal, but what am I supposed to do? Vote for a Democrat? They would be worse. We are choosing the lesser of two evils." Works every time.
Then Trump does them, and when questioned about that, they shrug it off.
thats not excusing trump supporters but also you can maybe understand why there is a predilection to just hope it goes away (because often it does)
They were very, very angry about the Greeland/EU mineral deal, which is why Trump immediately slapped a huge tariff on EU imports.
But Trump only cares about Trump. As long as he's getting attention, being on TV, scamming people, and cheating at golf, he's perfectly happy. He has no long term goals beyond that.
Trump can spout random bullshit all day long and neither he nor his supporters care. Meanwhile, all his detractors have to spend mountains of time disproving everything that comes out of his mouth.
Like, I don't understand your point here, I said stuff Trump has done, not stuff he said he's gonna do.
Yeah because it didn't happen (yet). Standard Trump supporter maneuver. If you went back to 2019 and asked them if they'd support someone trying to overthrow the result of a presidential election, you'd get the same visceral negative reaction.
Once it happens, they find reasons why it's okay.
What were their thoughts and reactions after Jan 6? Clearly it was not a red line for them, but just curious if you discussed it with them right after.
It's happened with every other thing he's done.
They don't support it until he does it, and then when he does it, they'll be ready to die on that hill.
He isn't the candidate people who actually hold on to any principles voted for, because he very explicitly has none, and he expects his supporters to not have any either. The only thing that matters is winning.
Everybody ingests at least some of their worldview and opinions from external voices. That's a reality of humans trying to navigate a complicated messy world. But it was really shocking seeing family members hold reasonable view "A", until the local talk radio station sprays out "A bad, B good", and then bam, instant complete retroactive reversal like they never thought "A".
The problem isn't that a political party is acting as hive mind, the problem is that the core pillar of conservatism they practice is 'I will use the law as a weapon against you, but I will not ever be bound by it'.
Which is no way to run a society, any I cannot have any respect for its disciples.
I worked on a farm in middle and high school at the time. Every blue collar dude, farmers, truckers, tradesmen all listened to Rush at lunchtime.
So no, these people are not to be trusted, there can be no negotiations, and no further reconciliation until they change their minds. Being "conservative" and "right-wing" is one thing. Being pro-Trump after February 2025 (and arguably January 2021) is nearly a crime.
And on the original topic, whether Trump ultimately decides to enjoy being kingmaker for the next presumptive nominee (someone's got to be pitching him an Apprentice style TV show...) in order to enjoy a happy retirement is moot when the presumptive nominee for Republican candidacy is going to be someone with similar policy and behaviour extremes. In fact, in some respects the prospects for things like collaborative scientific research if someone who espouses Trumpism but isn't Trump are probably even worse due to them being less incompetent and less straightforward to flatter/bribe into declaring that actually $organization or $country isn't terrible wokes or dangerous criminals after all and they in fact have a very strong relationship. Vance seems to believe some of his schtick. Sure, the successor probably won't be favourites to win a free and fair election in which they're saddled with Trump's mistakes and lack his charisma or cult, but if you're doing medium term planning you can't count on that faction being out of power forever
The Republicans have until the mid-terms to either fix the next election or install a no-compromise terror state.
Terrorising the population with ICE, suspending due process, and removing habeas corpus all suggest the plan is the latter. As is the absence of realistic reporting and criticism from a (mostly) captured MSM.
Sooner or later confrontations with ICE will turn violent, and then it gets very dark indeed.
This is why you can't get a working conversation in america, because the exchange of ideas and information is broken.
Would it be a new term if elections are suspended, or would it just be his second term continued?
I would expect some kind of brief "emergency" suspension followed by rewriting the rules and then a glorious re-election of our Great Leader.
This will change in the lead up to 2028. This is a pattern we've observed over and over again with Trump supporters, they draw a line, and once it's crossed they adjust to the new standard without fail. Trump now enjoys more popular support than ever before.
> That’s his best chance to stay out of jail
Absolutely zero chance he goes to jail. Not just because he's a former president and a billionaire, but also because it's a political impossibility. Even assuming Trump can't make a third term happen, and that the Democrats aren't indefinitely disaffected, holding Trump accountable is something that Democrats have proven themselves consistently unable to accomplish, nor do they want to, because it's a losing political agenda.
> He’s going to be old news in late 2028.
That's what they said in 2022.
When 2028 rolls around, the 4 years of straight up corruption, illegality, and power concentration will mean you wont have the tools to enforce your rules.
You are at your strongest, least tired, least weakened now. Today.
There is no tomorrow.
Americans have never lived most of their lives in a banana republic, so its understandable that they act as if there is a continuation of things.
There isn't.
Do you think the current VP has the integrity of VP Pence?
Then the clear culmination happened on Jan 6, 2021, that is certainly correct as well.
Its structural, not individual.
This idea that its a strange aberration of faith - Trump isn't the problem, hes just evidence that the efforts to counter watergate are working.
Its the Bannons, Stones and Murdochs of the world that create the media world for someone like Trump to exist.
Unless you are an actuarial expert with decades of experience in hedging geopolitical risks, you cannot meaningfully trade such events.