Stupid Watergate turns into Stupid McCarthy Era

[RockyRoadTravel]

How many days until the "President" starts on his enemies list and his lap dog Senators start investigating any patriot that speaks against him?

[stevenkesslar]

3 hours ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

How many days until the "President" starts on his enemies list and his lap dog Senators start investigating any patriot that speaks against him?

I think this is a big miscalculation by the Bozo MAGA types, and also to a great degree the press.  I think it's partly because they both like the "landslide" drama.

The big question that gradually bubbled up in Trump's first term was collusion with Russia.   Last I checked, Bob Mueller was a Republican, working under the authority of a Republican AG. He indicted Russians and laid out Trump's potential collusion and actual obstruction in detail.  Even so, Trump and MAGA have insisted ever since that it was a big Democratic nothingburger.   And, in fairness to Trump, no crime was proven

Now the issues are way more serious.  January 6th showed the whole world what Trump is really capable of.  Will he be a dictator on day one?  Will he try to jail or kill his political opponents?  What other democratic norms will he try to demolish? 

There might be an assumption that since Trump won by a few million votes, all these issues just went away.  The polls, which actually did a pretty good job of predicting Trump would win by a point or two, make it very clear that many voters simply voted against the Biden economy.  They are hoping Trump is different this time.  I hope they are right.

So all we have to do is just let Trump be Trump.  He certainly has won the right to do that.  Maybe he will be kindler and gentler, and shower child tax credits on Latino and Black Moms and Dads.  And cut child poverty in half.  I sure hope so.  But I ain't holding my breath.

48 % of America - at least - is simply hoping what we fear won't come to pass.  I don't think that is being calculated in.

I've loved watching Mark Halperin's 2Way.  To his credit, he has tried really hard to get Trump voters and Harris voters to talk to each other, and understand.  I think it works because the people he attracts are mostly not the true believers.  They mostly were able to be clear about their deep reservations about both Trump and Harris.

I think one thing Halperin just deeply misreads is this notion that Harris supporters are now going to have the biggest "mental health crisis in US history" - Halperin's words.  It's silly, really.  Because we know how this already played out from 2017 to 2021.  We're not going to go crazy.  We're going to resist if and when Trump actually does what we fear he is going to do.  

Stan Greenberg wrote about this already, as Trump 1.0 was growing more and more distrusted and unloved.

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Soon after Trump’s [2016] election, I discovered I could not put Clinton and Trump voters in the same room, because the Clinton, anti-Trump voter had become more vocal and assertive, sometimes disbelieving and rude. The same must have been happening across the country.

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By the 70-day mark, the anti-Trump women pushed back against Trump voters in conversation, even when outnumbered in the room. The moderator had to make an effort to bring Trump voters into the conversation to ensure the outnumbered Clinton voters did not dominate the discussion and so the Trump voters could be heard. This turned out to be an unintended test of the strength of their views and resolve to resist.

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Amazingly, at the seventy-day mark into the Trump presidency, the anti-Trump voters in these groups were bringing up the off-year elections to be held in 2018. Their doubts about Trump dominated their outlook, and they used words like “flabbergasted,” “devastated,” and “terrified” to describe how they felt about the country right now.

In fairness to Trump, none of this applies if who we elected is the kindler and gentler Trump, who wants nothing more than to shower child tax credits on the working class. And end child poverty.   If Trump instead showers tax cuts on billionaires, "protects" women against their will, and crushes democratic norms to get his way, that's a whole different thing.

Just as we can't say the election shocked us, the resistance that follows won't be shocking, either.