[Rosvanian]

Absolutely . Last time Trump didn't expect to win and it was shambolic. This time there is a plan and it's terrifying. Goodbye NATO and any commitments to sustainability or climate change initiatives.

[satnav]

Whilst there is every chance that Trump could win the next presidential election I still think he has got a big mountain to climb. He lost the last election because millions of female supporters turned against him. I can't really see what he has done over the last 3 years that will see those female voters flocking back to him. If anything the recent changes in abortion law has probably made his job even harder.

In 2016 he was the outsider who could offer America something new but in the forthcoming election the public will be able to judge him on what he achieved or didn't achieve when he was last in office. He will be answerable for the million or so Americans who died of Covid on his watch.

I'm not sure that simply quoting the same old hollow slogans over and over again will cut it at the next election.

[Boiler]

Absolutely . Last time Trump didn't expect to win and it was shambolic. This time there is a plan and it's terrifying. Goodbye NATO and any commitments to sustainability or climate change initiatives.

I think I saw somewhere that the Republicans have the EPA in their sights amongst other successful Biden initiatives: I also expect that any US aid to Ukraine will cease almost immediately.

Then how many other Western countries will fall away one can only guess at. I don't think Sunak has the same taste for aiding Zelensky that his predecessor did; already we have the "not grateful enough" noises off.

How did we get here, again?

[Youngian]

Never heard Sunak express any views on foreign affairs beyond global deregulation. Probably best he doesn’t.

[Bones McCoy]

Is it okay to be scared about something far away?

Because I am...

I think its entirely rational when you consider the number of Atlantic Bridges between our nations and the symmetry between the Trump and Johnson regimes.

We got very lucky on several counts:

Insufficient overlap between Trump and Johnson premierships for them to really work in lock step.
Covid also played a part in preventing them really cooperating.
Imagine for a moment, Johnson implementing the Brexit that Farage and friends wanted, with Trump leaning in to assist at every turn.
"Hey Donald, can we get a trade deal".
"Sure thing big lap dog, give us all your patents and let us run your healthcare".
Can we re-open Guantanamo to process our refugees?
"Good call Johnson, why didn't we think of that".


Both Trump and Johnson's governments so obsessed with culture war issues that they left little time for their truly damaging policy agendas.

Similar shenanigans on each side of the pond leading to impeachments / investigations - mainly due to the big men's lack of judgement.

Johnson's "dimwits only" approach to cabinet building derailed his ever delivering the Brexit his people wanted.
Trump's "Family first, no matter how inbred or addicted" similarly derailed some of his worst policies.


In retrospective, neither country's checks and balances did much to protect them from their own hostile leaders.
We owe a lot to the hubris and incompetence of those men.

[Youngian]

Let’s not forget the barely disguised disappointment Johnson and his cabinet showed at Biden’s victory. There’s no way May or even Cameron would place performative wins for Brexit above the threat Trump posed to Western security.
Defence, national security, rule of law and integrity in public service shouldn’t be things that liberals and the left should have to prioritise. Because that’s stuff that should be safe in the hands of the daddy parties. Unfortunately the GOP and the Tories became the drunken bum absent father parties.

[mattomac]

I think Biden wins again, I don’t think the midterms were particularly amazing and the party looks even more splintered. No doubt they will row back behind Trump but he is no longer President Trump.

[MisterMuncher]

I think it might be time to examine how marginal Trump's victory really was: He managed to effectively engage a small bloc of, for want of a better term, fucking nutters and weld it to the republican base, to defeat a pretty unpopular candidate selected by "will this do?". It wasn't quite lightning in a bottle, but as seen in 2020, he's definitely a man for whom "difficult second album" rings true.

Now look at those two blocs he had. He's driven a not huge but hardly insignificant number of the republican base away, and has managed (with plenty of help) to re-disengage a good chunk of aforementioned "fucking nutters" by convincing them the entire system is rigged.

Biden, meanwhile, has that kind of shy popularity all safe pairs of hands have, and has been objectively fairly effective (though equally, nowhere near good enough) coupled to the still fairly powerful factor of "not being Donald Trump". Trump is now in the Hilary spot: what they're going with because they can't think of anything else

[Abernathy]

So let's try to summarise this:

Trump is basically gambling on being able to bulldozer his way to the Republican nomination for president in 2024, more or less solely to to keep himself out of gaol for the multiple (all but unanswerable - he is on fucking videotape and audio tape actuallydoing it ) felony charges he is facing.

In this he is helped by three things :

1. The vast army of brain-dead, Fox News only watching, reactionary twats /idiots who idolise Trump in spite of everything, and who have- astonishingly, in my view - swallowed Trump's barely credible "political witch hunt" * narrative.*

2. The propagation of his refined version of the narrative- a totally shameless complete inversion of reality - which says that "people" are only "coming after him" because he is seeking to be elected president again.

3. The perverse formula that apparently dictates that the more crimes for which Trump is indicted, the stronger his support base becomes.

Can he really pull it off? I do hope that my instincts are correct and that he cannot effect this audacious corruption-driven coup. It would be unprecedented in every facet. But then, I sagely dismissed the prospect of a Trump victory in 2016 (aka the year madness gripped the globe).

I’m also rather uneasy about what Trump is attempting. It simply should not be possible for any convicted felon to be able to stand for any elected office, let alone that of president. It makes a mockery of the USA’s claims to be a modern democracy (well, that and the crazy electoral college).

* See also: Khan, Imran, Johnson, B..

[Tubby Isaacs]

Trump would run for the nomination anyway, and probably will run from behind bars if he needs to. Here's his main rival for the nomination.

[Crabcakes]

I reckon the GOP top brass behind the scenes are desperate to see Trump convicted, but can’t say so as they know it’ll enrage his rabid fanbase.

Thing is, DeSantis is arguably worse in every capacity, just less openly unhinged. But also, thankfully, astronomically unpleasant and unlikeable. If he ends up the GOP candidate by default, Biden will barely have to lift a finger.

[Boiler]

I reckon the GOP top brass behind the scenes are desperate to see Trump convicted, but can’t say so as they know it’ll enrage his rabid fanbase.

Thing is, DeSantis is arguably worse in every capacity, just less openly unhinged. But also, thankfully, astronomically unpleasant and unlikeable. If he ends up the GOP candidate by default, Biden will barely have to lift a finger.

I wish I shared your optimism.

[The Weeping Angel]

Trump would run for the nomination anyway, and probably will run from behind bars if he needs to. Here's his main rival for the nomination.

It's been very amusing watching his campaign crash and burn as he's exposed for the medocrity that he is.

[Boiler]

But while De Santis crashes and burns, who grows stronger...?

[mattomac]

DeSantis won’t win in a million years, they completely misjudged the country and Florida.

We simply don’t have a clue what will happen but here are my thoughts having read a few books on Trump.

A Very Stable Genius
I alone can fix it

Both give you some hints to why he won in 2016 and why he lost in 2020

Trump win
Was able to galvanise even more support in 2020

Trump Defeat
Trump knows best, he won’t succumb to anyone’s advice

To win he needs to be fairly muted and stick to the right lines

He was President in 2020, very few incumbent presidents lose and they have to do something unusually bad, bar Afghanistan which Biden mostly avoided a mass amount of criticism as Trump was much to blame and Americans wanted out and the blip in oil he has done rather well.

Mid terms were pretty bad and worse were the ones where Trump showed some loyalty to, same happened on election night in 2020

It is again female undecided voters at the end of the day those who swing and swing Democrat both at the election and in the midterms.

I think Biden wins on much the same electoral college. If Trump doesn’t get the Republican vote then De Santis won’t

[The Weeping Angel]

But while De Santis crashes and burns, who grows stronger...?

It's still very funny seeing DeSantis crash and burn.

[Crabcakes]

But while De Santis crashes and burns, who grows stronger...?

No one? Trump isn’t getting magically *more* popular overall if De Santis implodes - he just has a very vocal base who are increasingly gobby (but also increasingly, in jail). The people who didn’t vote for him last time are incredibly unlikely to now switch to vote for a more bitter, crapper version of him especially with first-hand experience of how he 100% didn’t ’grow into the job’ as was so often predicted more out of hope than much else by desperate pundits.

It’s a fight between a split Republican Party for a dwindling slice of pie. The frontrunner is a sociopath who may be in jail before polling day and who people hold responsible for the repeal of Roe vs Wade. The second placer is a ghoul whose policies in Florida are losing the state money hand over fist and whose unpopularity increased directly proportional to exposure. Trump’s supporters will never switch to DeSantis because they loathe him for even daring challenge the orange messiah. DeSantis hasn’t got enough support to boost Trump even if it swing behind him.

Meanwhile Biden has got genuinely helpful policies through, has steadied and grown the economy, seen off inflation and restored the US’s reputation globally.

Genuinely moderate GOP-leaning voters will vote Biden. Many floating voters will vote Biden out of fear and/or loathing of who the GOP put up. And depending on who the GOP put up you either have *everyone* galvanised against Trump 2: Trump harder, or you have the GOP supporters turning on ‘RINOs’ and imploding while Biden goes head to head with a man who has all the charm and warmth of a cadaver.

[The Weeping Angel]

Some good news from Ohio for a change.

https://19thnews.org/2023/08/ohio-issue ... -abortion/

Ohio voters rejected an effort that would have made it harder to pass citizen-led ballot initiatives, in a rebuke of Republican efforts to block an expansion of abortion rights that’s on the ballot in November.

Issue 1, which would have raised the threshold to pass citizen-led ballot measures from a simple majority to a 60 percent threshold failed, Decision Desk HQ projected. With about 24 percent of the votes in, “no” led by an almost 40-point margin.

[davidjay]

You know when you think a situation is so batshit that nothing about it could ever surprise you, then it does?

Toddlers and guns.

[Youngian]

It’ll take more than being called Kennedy to eat into Biden’s votes. If this loon is a spoiler candidate stuck up by Republicans, it’s going to backfire on Trump or DeSantis.
https://x.com/cnash211/status/168900299 ... Dkr8MiQKBg