[FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

Wed Nov 11 12:28:44 EST 2020

My generous read is that the Trump enablers are allowing Trump to rage for
a while, let the lawsuits demonstrate their pointlessness, let him fiddle
with the government pointlessly, and hope that he'll come up with a
suitably Trumpian way to concede while not conceding, probably a grandiose
resignation.  Arguing with him about this is clearly a one way ticket to
his shit list, and having watched him rally so many voters to his candidacy
they are loathe to give even the least hint of abandoning him.  The TV
networks taking his rants about fraud off the air probably discourages him
more than anything else.   Maybe we should offer to throw him a state
funeral -- with tanks and flyovers -- for the end of his term?  And promise
that everyone will say it had better ratings than the Biden inauguration?

The exit polls heard that 34% of voters voted the economy,   On TV I saw a
black business woman from North Carolina say her vote for Trump was about
the way he was making it easier for her business to succeed.  Then I heard
a young latino from Florida say his vote was against the democrat socialist
tendencies.  I listened to a neighbor from the projects, who actually voted
Biden, rant about the evil of a welfare system that has institutionalized
single motherhood as a career and intergenerational family tradition.
These aren't the typical voices of Trump's base, these are traditional
Republican issues:  government regulations hurt business; you can't fix the
world by telling it to be better, no matter what penalties;  the best
intentions can have unintended consequences worse than the original
disease.  These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism,
authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that
other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons.

It might be my own fantasy, but I think a majority of Americans do not
disagree about the ends.  They would prefer an equitable society where none
of the usual suspects biased any one person's pursuit of happiness in
life.  They would prefer to live in a world where environmental disasters
large and small were not lurking around every turn of the season.  They
would prefer if the rest of the world enjoyed the prosperity and freedom
that we have here.  But there is a disagreement about the means to these
ends that's been a Democrat/Republican talking point for almost a hundred
years now.

I think the Democrats and Progressives need to eviscerate the Trump
coalition by persuading the rational part of Trump's vote that it doesn't
need hold their nose and vote for Trump to be heard.  Well, I guess they
did have to, but they won't have to in the future.  That will be an
interesting feat of bipartisanship if Biden can pull it off.  Call it the
New Way Forward.

-- rec --

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 8:48 AM David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu>
wrote:

> Yes, much agreed Glen.
>
> I am getting to the point where something combining tedium and
> stress-narcolepsy puts me to sleep, wading through more newspaper articles
> saying in (performative?) outrage: McConnell has just said this
> self-contradictory and hypocritical thing!  How could he!  How can his
> supporters not recognize this!  etc.
>
> Yes.  And Duterte and MBS have just had some more people killed, and Putin
> has poisoned somebody else.  They will cease to do this when they are
> stopped, and not before.  Their followers and collaborators too.  So what’s
> the plan?
>
> Will be interesting if trump is firing people at DOD, in the Pentagon,
> etc., because he wants, together with Pompeo and Barr, to try some military
> move against either the US public, or some other country to create some
> leverage situation against the US public.  My mind doesn’t work in a way
> that recognizes what might be appealing to them to try in that arena.
>
> Best, so to speak,
>
> Eric
>
>
> > On Nov 10, 2020, at 11:07 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Yep. The other thread talking about uniting us in the face of
> polarization seem to miss this point. One pundit expressed it well "You
> don't seek unity with your abuser." As Barr and a host of Republicans,
> including McConnell <
> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/us/politics/republicans-trump-concede-2020-election.html>,
> continue to hypocritically undermine the electoral process, any attempt to
> "unite" with them is akin to co-dependency with a narcissist spouse.
> >
> > *After* the dust settles, Biden has no choice but to wrangle and hog-tie
> the bad faith actors into productive behavior. But until then, everyone who
> continues making unsubstantiated claims of fraud should be seen as what
> they are. Skepticism is a good mistress, but a bad master.
> >
> > On 11/9/20 5:09 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> >> Those with access to Georgia TV stations can watch David Perdue and
> Kelly Loeffler make a pack and attack Raffensperger, or whatever his name
> is — the election commissioner — because he ran an actually remarkably
> competent and clean election, rather than stealing it for them.  Pretty
> transparent.
> >>
> >> I was impressed and thought he deserved a lot of credit.  Of course
> Stacey Abrams is a hero, but that’s another story.
> >
> >
> > --
> > ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
> >
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