10-12-2020, 11:57 AM
(10-12-2020, 03:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(10-11-2020, 11:35 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: "Establishment" Republicans have no real home in the Trump universe unless they sell out. Some have, and this has the potential to end some political careers. Trump has failed to recognize that some supporters are toxic.I'd say Trump's base is about equal to the Democratic base. So, who is a Libertarian voter more likely to support this year? Biden or Trump? We've had a lot of individual freedoms trampled on this year and there are freedoms at stake as well.
No coalition remains intact indefinitely. Obviously some pols who win anomalous victories will demonstrate the next time how anomalous their wins were. Some will prove not up to the job and lose to an opponent who promises to be a competent replacement. Some may even prove to be crooks.
The Trump base is at most 40% of the American electorate (OK, someone like Classic X'er might assert that that base is the only part of America that is truly American). 40% might be enough for winning a nomination, but it is not enough for winning a nationwide election. Obviously the 2020 election must be over before we can draw any conclusions or lessons from it.
Except in super-safe bailiwicks, winning only the base is not enough. Donald Trump has little more than the core GOP support and his cult behind him. Trump has lost the political center, and even if the center is as little as 5% of the vote, then losing that part of the vote is enough to lose the election.
The libertarian vote is small this time, and I expect libertarians to stand with Joe Biden, even if he is no libertarian, because small-government libertarianism is incompatible with fascism.
Most of the loss of basic freedoms relates to the Trump Plague. The US leads in deaths from COVID-19, having almost twice as many deaths as the country in second place (India) which has about three times the US population. At 218 thousand deaths, we are approaching a total very close to the 100th largest city in the USA -- Baton Rouge, Louisiana, best known as either the capital of Louisiana or as the home of the Jimmy Swaggart Ministry. You know Jimmy Swaggart -- so bad that he is unintentionally funny for his malapropisms.
Trump has called for arresting his opponent and his predecessor for crimes... whatever those happen to be. Note well: Trump's Presidency is itself unraveling. No, there are not "good people on both sides" when it comes to neo-Nazis any more than there are "good people on both sides" on such behaviors as drug-dealing, human-trafficking, child molestation, arson, or murder-for-hire.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.