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> I wonder what the top Republican leaders honestly think about these foreseeable outcomes

It doesn't matter what they think. Trump's message resonates with the electorate much more effectively than theirs, partly because of his political brand and partly because he has a network of social media acolytes who broadcast his messaging to each segment and demographic. It's a positive feedback loop wherein anyone who dares to go off-message or criticize his decisions gets instantaneous blowback from the MAGA audience themselves, so they quickly recalibrate. At this point, Trump has built a metaphorical tower of skulls of political foes within the party (e.g. Marjorie Taylor Greene).

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Despite everything that has happened over the past year, the Democrats only have a few percentage points lead over the Republicans in current midterm polling. As an outside observer: Absolutely wild. I know a lot about the reasons, but it still feels completely surreal.

There's a vox video about it: the firehose of falsehoods

It will explain a lot

Ps. Yes, insane

Trump is not unique. You can find similar parties and figures in most of Europe. Usually the would-be autocrat populist is even more popular than in the US in two party systems. Multi party systems dilute it which just leads to paralysis until eventually >40% of your population is ok with abandoning democracy because the impacts of paralysis are stacking up (France).

And just wait until all the stimulus Trump is going to drop on Americans before the midterms to make everything look good and gain back some voters.

He can’t actually do much with votes in Congress he doesn’t have. Take money from programs via executive order? Ok, I guess. Cut checks to voters with that money? Even the Supreme Court would blush at that.

He doesn't have to follow through. Announcing a stimulus check might be sufficient.

Do people still believe that the tariffs are somehow decreasing taxes?

>He can’t actually do much with votes in Congress he doesn’t have.

Can't he? He can't impose tariffs without congress, he can't declare war without congress. And yet...

The last declared war by congress was WWII

The democrats have been an absolute failure of a party for the last decade and the fact their voters refuse to hold leadership accountable for those failures says everything you need to know.

There should have been a house-clearing of leadership up and down the party apparatus in 2016 and again in 2024 but nope. We'd rather hope those perpetual losers get their act together out of fear of the unknown.

The internal frictions around sanders and mamdani were at least some movement in a less corrupt direction. This is more than republicans can offer.

The Democratic party is the reason Sanders did not win. Their refusal to back progressives in any meaningful way is exactly what I'm talking about. The dems would sooner let Trump have a 3rd term than allow a progressive like Mamdani to win the presidency, which is precisely my point.

They don't share Trump's message, or not exactly. They share an edited version of it. That seems to be why Trump has started insisting he's serious repeatedly. The conservative media is ignoring or toning down the least popular ideas.

It matters to me, because they were not powerless to stop this scenario. The point of a representative democracy.

After January 6th, Mitch McConnell could have whipped up the votes to impeach Trump. Forever banishing him from office. Or over the past four years, when asked, "Did Donald Trump lose the election" instead of equivocating, every Congressperson could have said, "Of course he did. Donald Trump is a loser who lost a fair election, but threw a tantrum when the result did not go his way."

Liz Cheney took a stand, and the party punished her for it. Trump was too popular, Republicans preferred to latch onto that energy, despite the consequences.

No raindrop thinks it is responsible for the flood. These leaders enabled this scenario, because they (correctly!) predicted it could help them hold onto power. Now we watch the results unfold as the world does everything to extricate itself from the USA.

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