Yeah. Up until we realized that Trump was actually going to flip Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, I think everyone assumed that Trump was a buffoon who would come crashing back from political gravity. Indeed, we had assumed all three of those states were so safely blue that it is somewhat likely that this hubris contributed to Hill…
Yeah. Up until we realized that Trump was actually going to flip Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, I think everyone assumed that Trump was a buffoon who would come crashing back from political gravity. Indeed, we had assumed all three of those states were so safely blue that it is somewhat likely that this hubris contributed to Hillary’s defeat — in all three states, Jill Stein’s vote total alone was enough to flip the state if it’d gone to Hillary.
But the fact that he won once has only emboldened the monsters and encouraged the previously mainstream press to “sanewash” him in its usual horse race reporting. And that combination has been highly corrosive to our institutions in general.
This may well be Trump’s last campaign, win or lose. If he wins, the courts will PROBABLY rediscover their backbone and enforce the 22nd Amendment, as they refused to do for the 14th. If he loses, he will be 82 and probably be in federal prison four years from now, and will probably be unable to run, but he will likely be martyred to the far right and become a campaign slogan for future GOP candidates promising to pardon him.
Either way, I agree that the time to stop him was in 2016. Now we’re just running damage control from not having realized that the first time.
I agree, but only partly. We have definitely lost something that may be gone forever. But remember, it was always an experiment. And we always understood that wickedness is a real thing in politics and it never goes away.
So now we have to make some changes again. I hope the Bulwark will be a force for good whatever happens on election day. But Bulwark will have to transform from an anti-Trump coalition to something new in order to meet the problems we will face after the election. Even if Kamala wins, and she very well might, it’s not going back to pre-Trump days. We still have a two decades of absolutely horrible law from scotus and an electorate that, while post-identity politics in some ways, still frames up too many issues as “existential” or apocalyptic. When issues are defined that way, people will approach the problem with fanaticism.
Agree, Brad, except I think The Bulwark has been branding itself as part of the pro-democracy coalition. If Kamala wins, the anti-democracy minority will endure [it's been part of our history since the founding], and the pro-democracy majority will have a lot of work to do to de-fang it. I am expecting the Bulwark to be a leading voice in that work.
Yeah. Up until we realized that Trump was actually going to flip Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, I think everyone assumed that Trump was a buffoon who would come crashing back from political gravity. Indeed, we had assumed all three of those states were so safely blue that it is somewhat likely that this hubris contributed to Hillary’s defeat — in all three states, Jill Stein’s vote total alone was enough to flip the state if it’d gone to Hillary.
But the fact that he won once has only emboldened the monsters and encouraged the previously mainstream press to “sanewash” him in its usual horse race reporting. And that combination has been highly corrosive to our institutions in general.
This may well be Trump’s last campaign, win or lose. If he wins, the courts will PROBABLY rediscover their backbone and enforce the 22nd Amendment, as they refused to do for the 14th. If he loses, he will be 82 and probably be in federal prison four years from now, and will probably be unable to run, but he will likely be martyred to the far right and become a campaign slogan for future GOP candidates promising to pardon him.
Either way, I agree that the time to stop him was in 2016. Now we’re just running damage control from not having realized that the first time.
Our democracy was lost when the Courts ruled in favor of Citizens United and then rolled back the Voter's Rights Act
I agree, but only partly. We have definitely lost something that may be gone forever. But remember, it was always an experiment. And we always understood that wickedness is a real thing in politics and it never goes away.
So now we have to make some changes again. I hope the Bulwark will be a force for good whatever happens on election day. But Bulwark will have to transform from an anti-Trump coalition to something new in order to meet the problems we will face after the election. Even if Kamala wins, and she very well might, it’s not going back to pre-Trump days. We still have a two decades of absolutely horrible law from scotus and an electorate that, while post-identity politics in some ways, still frames up too many issues as “existential” or apocalyptic. When issues are defined that way, people will approach the problem with fanaticism.
Agree, Brad, except I think The Bulwark has been branding itself as part of the pro-democracy coalition. If Kamala wins, the anti-democracy minority will endure [it's been part of our history since the founding], and the pro-democracy majority will have a lot of work to do to de-fang it. I am expecting the Bulwark to be a leading voice in that work.