Well, Main Street USA has spoken, and it’s now pretty safe to say that the Democrats pulled out a victory in the midterms and the Republicans screwed it totally.
Over the past few days, one result after another came in, all of them terrible for the GOP. They had to surrender the hope of a red wave on election night and in the days after, as it became clear that only a score or so of House seats were going to change hands, and the last of these would take days and weeks to count and then recount. Then they lose the Pennsylvania Senate seat to John Fetterman, who had alarmingly blorked and gasped his way through the one debate — bravely, yes, but also alarmingly, the victim of a stroke months earlier. Elsewhere, Democratic Senate seats polled as close didn’t come near to falling.
With their narrative shot, the Republican media celebrated the never-in-doubt Florida victories of Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco “Little Hands” Rubio, and glommed onto the Nevada and Arizona Senate races, and the latter state’s hardcore election-denier governor and state secretary candidates. Adam Laxalt from Nevada and Blake Masters from Arizona became cable news fixtures, as the right desperately tried to keep some sort of momentum going.
But it was not to be. In the last 48 hours both have fallen after some hard counting, to incumbents Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada and Mark Kelly in Arizona. And then, in the last 24, mirabile dictu, the shiny, sharp-tongued, take-no-priso… oh look, arsehole, she’s just an arsehole, Kari Lake, Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate, narrowly lost to Katie Hobbs, the current state secretary.
Et tu Arizona? Then die red wave. Lake had been their star girl, Trump with poise, the politician they had hoped Sarah Palin would be. Her putdowns of the media, her sinister allusions to what would follow her election and her unashamed election denial had made her Joan of Arizona. They warmed their hands by her glow, and then she went up in flames, a little smoke signal in the desert She, and her election-denier state secretary running mate Mark Finchem, appear to be refusing to accept the result, and they have plenty to work with, as the count took days, and had a late blue surge.
The Republicans are even suffering the ignominy of being raced to the limit on the House. At time of writing, they’re on 217, one short of a majority of 218. There aren’t many places left to get them: the Republicans are fighting for four seats in California, and the rest are scattered, such as gun-totin’ mama Lauren Boebert in Colorado, fighting for her political life.
It’s getting very very tight for them, and it will almost be more trouble than it’s worth. The Republican leadership’s desire to roll out a comprehensive anti-Biden program will be somewhat stymied by the dozen or so Republicans who have won seats in Democrat-leaning districts, and will suddenly be interested in the idea of consensus, coming together, a new respect, etc, etc. Meanwhile, the right of the party has been making noise about blocking Kevin McCarthy as the new speaker — though they couldn’t stop him getting voted up as House GOP leader today, which is the precursor.
How could it possibly get any worse? Well, Donald Trump is about to announce his candidacy for 2024, and may well have done so by the time you read this. With many of the candidates he sponsored having crashed and burned, the deep hatred of the Republican establishment directed towards him, and being a direct competitor for the base with heir apparent DeSantis, he is the Republicans’ nightmare.
News Corp has not so quietly instr-, er, urged Trump not to run, and a bunch of MAGA House reps who were going to attend the announcement at Mar-a-Lago have suddenly melted away. For Trump, this all should be a disaster. The one thing he hates is to be called is a loser, and, as Chris Christie pointed out, he has lost the party, the House in 2018, the presidency in 2020, and the Senate in 2022.
But the trouble for the Republicans is: there’s no one like The Donald. He is utterly singular. For his supporters — and he still has enough to surge through the primaries — he exists at a position somewhere between reality and fantasy. They love him not because he gives a story about free enterprise and that anyone can make it, but precisely because he doesn’t.
Trump is, in the cultural memory and on TV, “the boss”, and for many he’s redolent of a time, the post-war Keynesian period, when a “class realism” was more frequently applied than homilies about striving. Trump promised not that everyone could get rich, but that the “good jobs” would come back. By this, he meant high-paying factory jobs of old, jobs that the non- or basic-skilled could walk into.
This is the opposite of the purported American dream because it accepts class not only as legitimate but as a preferred mode of life. With free-market Republicans praising driven entrepreneurs and Democrats in love with exceptional heroes of gender, race, identity, etc, Trump provided a politics for the rest. “Because he’s a businessman,” hundreds of people said, “he knows how to run things.”
They said it like “businessman” was a caste, not a profession, and they liked that because it offered stability and certainty. In a world where billions were made from computer magic by kids, Trump reunited the idea of the leader, the elder and the father. He offered the promise of stability, not disruption, and this supported the magical notion that he had unique qualities that restored a lost America.
That, in turn, allowed such beliefs to be transferred to the Trump family as a whole — or his progeny and son-in-law at least. Such a belief in Trump thus made all the opulence part of his gift to his people. Coming down a gold elevator to accept a nomination? Does not the most famous myth of modern America have four broken characters on a journey to wholeness by “following the yellow brick road”?
Professional politicians of the right such as DeSantis can’t provide anything like that. The right are desperately talking themselves into the idea that the Trump magic can be transferred across, without acknowledging what a singular place Florida has become, and how Americans look for something different in a president than they look for in a governor. Mind you, Trump couldn’t provide these things either, and there are a lot of people who won’t be fooled again. But they certainly wouldn’t accept it from “a politician”, not beyond the base in any case.
Of course, if Trump doesn’t run, this was all moot. But even so, his presence will hang in the air, above the Republican primaries, over everything. Bizarrely, the Republican losses caused by his endorsement have strengthened his power, as the party is in a state of vacuum. Trump can stroll in and dictate, and there will be no unified front against him. Trump’s a conman, the type who can bilk his marks repeatedly because he keeps the relationship with them. With that situation in place, he could stroll through the primaries and pick up the nomination like a feather in Main Street USA.
Some who support Trump may see “stability” in the man…but i reckon a large chunk of his base love him for the totally opposite reason.
Trump represents chaos. He is the anti-politician. His insults, his crudity, his defiance of correctness, the aggro passions he stirs up at his quasi-rock star rallies – it all promises one thing, and that is revenge on the system that these people feel has failed them.
It’s about the people getting their pound of flesh. They want a destroyer, not a diplomat. They are fed up with the stock standard mealy mouthed politicians.
This is why the rioters on Jan 6th were so ebullient, it was like the day of judgement was finally at hand.
I don’t know if it’s too late to ever win these people back, i can’t imagine what a president would have to do to mollify them.
The best the US can hope for, if they want actual stability, is to keep exhorting the other voters who haven’t lost faith in their society to continue to turn up and vote in numbers and b) actually try and change a system that is so radically gamed against so many of its citizens.
Great comment
Yes. He reinforces their grievances against a system that has changed to their perceived disadvantage.
And their actual disadvantage. Sadly, their ire is being harvested and misdirected by their actual enemies.
They did. Red wave turned out to be a fizzer. Polls got it wrong…again. They underestimated that if U take away basic human rights like abortion, and single handedly piss off half (and most blokes) of the voters, you’re screwed. Trump will go nowhere. He’s over
Get them employed, restore their earning power and increase their living standards.
This will not win back all of them – a substantial fraction of Conservatives these days define their politics pretty much entirely as ‘anything but “left”‘ after all – but it will be a lot and, more importantly, enough.
They may not be prepared to vote for the people who have done that, but they are at least much less likely to vote for the person making empty promises they might do it.
Neither major party in the US (or Australia, for that matter) is particularly interested in pursuing those goals, however, hence Trump – or people like him – will continue to put entire societies at risk until one eventually succeeds and blows the whole thing up. At least in Australia there’s the possibility that a swathe of Centrist Independents might keep the worst excesses of the right under control.
Most of the Jan 6 rioters were employed. Some even flew to DC via private jet. Those in insecure jobs and limited discretionary income don’t take multiple week days off work to travel to DC and storm capitol.
Trump never delivered anything on work rights or minimum wage. What he gives them is a license to be offensive and incoherent.
“Get them employed, restore their earning power and increase their living standards.”
This wouldn’t work for any of them. The followers of Trump firmly believe that their success is down to their hard work and effort, their shortfalls and failings are down to the ‘woke’ (Whatever that means) the government and the pernicious feeling of inadequacy left by observing more successful contemporaries. These are the same people who will stand on the faces of their peers to get ahead while being utterly contemptuous of anyone who doesn’t quite get to the mark or didn’t have as much luck as they. (perhaps subconsciously they recognise their good fortune and suffer imposter syndrome as a result)
Its the crab mentality in a nutshell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
“Because he’s a businessman,” hundreds of people said, “he knows how to run things.”
Nonsense on Stilts , as Jeremy Bentham would have called it… given his 6 Chapter 11 filings as below, he could not even make money from casinos
1. Trump Taj Mahal, 1991:Trump’s first business bankruptcy hit him the hardest personally, according to a New York Times report. Just one year after opening, and after spending $1 billion in construction at Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, the casino filed for Chapter 11 reorganisation. It was $3 billion in debt and Trump had about $900 million in personal liabilities. He lost half his stake in the casino and was forced to sell his yacht and airline company.
2. Trump Castle,1992 :Less than a year after filing Chapter 11 with the Taj Mahal, Trump was back in bankruptcy court for Trump’s Castle, another Atlantic City casino that opened in 1985. To get this business out of the red, Trump had to trade his 50 percent share in the casino for lower interest rates of $338 million in bonds, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
3. Trump Plaza and Casino, 1992:The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, which opened in 1984, declared bankruptcy at the same time as the Castle. The casino had racked up $250 million in debt, coupled with an 80 percent decline in cash flow — the casino industry had fallen on hard times,
4. Plaza Hotel, 1992:For Trump businesses, 1992 was a bad year. Trump also filed bankruptcy on another Plaza, this one the famed hotel in New York City, later that year. Trump bought the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan for $390 million in 1988, but it tacked on more than $550 million in debt by 1992. In the Chapter 11 reorganisation Trump remained the CEO (sans salary), but dropped his 49 percent stake in the Plaza to a total of six lenders, according to ABC News.
5. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts, 2004:Trump’s businesses go 12 years before the next filing, for Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts. His casinos — including the Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Marina and Trump Plaza casinos in Atlantic City, and a riverboat casino in Indiana — were more than $1.8 billion in debt, according to the NBC. In the restructuring, Trump had to reduce his share in the company from 47 percent to 27 percent, but he remained the company’s larges single shareholder, according to The Associated Press.
6. Trump Entertainment Resorts, 2009:Crippled by the recession, Trump Entertainment Resorts — formerly Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts — was back in bankruptcy court just five years later after it missed a $53.1 million bond interest payment, according to ABC News.This time, Trump resigned as the company’s chairman and had his corporate stake in the company reduced to 10 percent.
To which may be added…
1. Trump Steaks
2. Go Trump
3. Trump Airlines
4. Trump Vodka
5. Trump Mortgage
6. Trump: The Game
7. Trump Magazine
8. Trump University
9. Trump Ice
10. The New Jersey Generals
11. Tour de Trump
12. Trump Network
13. Trumped!
nd now Truth Social seems to be floundering!
Is Truth Social as floundering as Musk Social?
Touché
the answer is Devon Nunes..
Preaching to the choir here! We know this, but the Trump appeal to his base is on emotion, not facts – he just has to look the part
Yes.
As a former road cyclist, my favourite cancelled Trump sponsored business is the little known professional road tour Tour de Trump. To paraphrase Trump, an event the likes of which no one has seen before (or since…). Love the utterly pretentious use of the French “de”.
From Politico:
And Trump went about making it happen in his unique fashion: Only a bicycle race with Trump’s name could link together a Saudi arms dealer, a Dutch brothel and the prince of New Age Pop piano. But despite its high profile, and even with the real estate nabob’s knack for publicity and pageantry, Trump’s namesake race lasted only two years, the short run largely thanks to his empire’s billions of dollars of debt.
Pretension is what The Trump is all about… that a pathological narcissism
When I first heard about this I thought it must be apocryphal, but it’s one of the most Trump things ever.
A Dutch brothel at least has integrity.
Too many people only know him from his play-acting on The Apprentice.
You’re missing the point.
Rundle’s talking about perceptions, not facts.
Thanks Howard. You’ve convinced me Trump is a fraud. It never occurred to me. Now send that to tens of millions of rustbelt voters, who saw Trump on TV
Guy,
It would not matter as they are infected by Foxitis, as below
Fighting Foxitis
For decades a debilitating disease has been spreading across America. Risk Factors include being over 65, Republican and white. Symptoms include unhinged muttering, delusional thinking and an irresistible urge to storm the Capitol. The disease is called “Foxitis” and a lawyer called Joseph Hurley, who is representing alleged US Capitol rioter Anthony Antonio, wants us to believe his client is suffering from it.
Antonio lost his job at the beginning of the pandemic and spent the next six months sitting at home watching Fox, Hurley told a DC court on Thursday. “He became hooked with what I call ‘Foxitis’ or ‘Foxmania’ and … started believing what was being fed to him.” According to Hurley, Fox brainwashed Antonio into believing Trump wanted him to march on Washington as part of a patriotic movement.” Now Antonio is facing five charges over his role in the January riot.
It seems unlikely that Hurley’s inspired defense will get Antonio off the hook. Particularly as a number of alleged Capitol rioters have, in a similar move, already unsuccessfully tried to blame the former president for their actions: a tactic that has become known as the “Trump defense”. (Gotta love rightwingers! While they love to talk about individual responsibility, they seem incapable of taking any themselves.) That said, while it may not end up getting a judge’s seal of approval, “Foxitis” is no joke. Unlike affluenza, another disease-defense dreamed up by a lawyer, Foxitis is something we should all take very seriously indeed.
Fox may not be able to take over your brain and force you to do things in the same way that weird parasite that turns ants into suicidal zombies does, but it is hard to overstate the network’s outsize influence. A number of studies suggest that Fox News’s coverage of the pandemic, which was characterized by racism and misinformation, may have caused its viewers to take the coronavirus less seriously, for example, with consequences to public health.
Now Tucker Carlson, who was one of the few Fox News hosts who actually took the pandemic seriously early on, is diversifying his usual racist rants with angereous anti-vaxxer propaganda. Weirdly, he never seems to mention that his boss, Rupert Murdoch, was one of the first people in the world to get the vaccine. Murdoch got his jab in the UK in in December 2020. The King of Misinformation got vaccinated three weeks before the Queen of England.
Fox isn’t just a danger to public health, it’s a danger to democracy. It spent months amplifying Donald Trump’s lies about the integrity of the 2020 election; it may not have forced people to storm the Capitol, but it’s hard to argue that it wasn’t in some way responsible for inciting the riots. Antonio and his fellow alleged rioters shouldn’t be the only ones on trial: Fox should be too.
And, to some degree they are, the network has been sued for $1.6bn by the North American voting machine company Dominion, which has accused the network of defamation. Media Matters has also started a campaign, urging people to ask cable carriers to drop Fox News from their packages.
Ultimately, however, lawsuits and protests are not going to be enough to fully eradicate Foxitis. Particularly as the disease has multiple variants, including the particularly nasty Facebookitis. Misinformation will never go away. However, we can and must inoculate people against it.
How? By heavily investing in education and media literacy. I’ve quoted Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister before, but I don’t think this point can be stressed enough: misinformation is a virus and the only way to get it under control is to build what Tang calls “nerd immunity”.
Beware the deadly new disease spreading across America: ‘Foxitis’
Arwa Mahdawi The Guardian 08 May 2021
Thanks for your efforts in your exposition of those infected.
Trump is a candidate, just to raise millions of campaign donations that he can use as he wishes
Yes, it’s his best money-making venture ever, and for him, probably the most enjoyable.
That is what his old attorney , Michael Cohen, reckons too.
He won’t go all the way so as not to be remembered as a twice loser, or he might even be legally prevented to do so, but the opportunity for easy money if just too good.
“ Trump promised not that everyone could get rich, but that the “good jobs” would come back. By this, he meant high-paying factory jobs of old, jobs that the non- or basic-skilled could walk into.”
This is a fascinating idea, because it makes me wonder how far American Trumpists are simply rejecting the idea of becoming part of the traditional institutions of modern society – medicine, the Law, education, civil service – because they see all these large institutional sectors as simply havens of Wokerati – The Enemy!
They aspire to practical work, they aspire to be small business owners. But have the rifts in society gotten so wide that they no longer aspire to have anything to do with what they regard as corrupt institutions?
Mmm, likely, perhaps civilisation itself is seen as a corrupt institution, drawing faithful puritans and faithless libertarians into the arena for an intimate night of second comings with Father Don, Son-in-law, and the Holy $moke.
They dont aspire to be small business owners, from my observation. The ‘make it in America’ stuff leaves them cold. They aspire to good simple well paid jobs they can walk into, and get relatively high pay and health benefits. Trump was the only one to (falsely) offer that. So they flocked to him
They aspire to the things their parents and grandparents had in the ~30-40 years post-WW2 that have been sacrificed at the altar of neoliberalism.
Plentiful, well-paid, secure jobs that didn’t require university degrees to even make it past the first gate. Affordable houses that only required a single income to acquire.
Fix those problems and restore the middle class, and the culture wars will drop off dramatically. People care a lot less about trying to blame their problems on others when their problems are smaller.
It is the same in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, etc.
Trump also has followers that believe in really crazy conspiracy stuff – blood drinking politicians and celebrities, secret tunnels, porn rings, military obedience to Trump – and they are hoping not for political outcomes but rather a whole fantastical redemption story. These people have found meaning in their lives, community in each other and hope in what actually amounts to pure fantasy.
Forums are filled with people who were hoping the announcement was going to be something much bigger. Something they call The Storm, where all the evil Deep State and Democrats are arrested. Where Trump is restored to the presidency they still believe he won in 2020.
Now that Trump has merely announced a run for presidency, they are disappointed and angry. They see his re-running for presidency in 2024 as “giving up”; as accepting the legitimacy of the Biden presidency. They are fed up and disillusioned. I guess they will retreat back to their mundane lives.
It’s easy to dismiss these people as RWNJs, and usually I do. But it is also very sad that society has degraded like this.
The digital age was supposed to bring progress, enlightenment and collaboration. Instead we have media concentration, social media, “fake news”, and the propagation of misinformation is creating division the like of which I would never have believed if I wasn’t witnessing it in front of my eyes.
In the run up to the last election I listened to an interview with a man who didn’t often vote. He was crying because he had a job for the first time in years and could feed and clothe his children again. He put that down to Trump – didn’t think there were any other factors involved and genuinely believed he would be out of work again if Trump was no longer president.
Would that be the 2020 election ?
Yep, the last presidential election he ran against Biden.
“division the like of which I would never have believed” – which version of human history have you been reading?
That should be RWRNJ, second R for religious, as many of them are in Pentecostalist/Evangelical/Prosperity Cults that claim to be Christian,
Believing that TheTrump is some sort of Messiah