Life After Trump 2.0

joepistole

joepistole

Deacon Blues
Valued Senior Member
Since the first thread on this topic was hijacked by Russian trolls, I'm restarting the conversation. It's increasingly transparent that Trump will not win the election. So the question becomes what happens after the election? What happens to Trump? What happens to the Republican Party, and most importantly what happens to the nation?

Most immediate is the election. As Trump realizes his hopes of electoral success are vanishing, he is doubling down on extremism. He once again falsely alleging that everything is rigged against him an in particular, the media. Trump is in essence looking for anyone and anything to blame for his failures and that's not unusual for him. He has been doing it all his life. It's consistent for someone suffering from narcissistic personality disorder.

That said, Trump's personality problems bring forth some very grave problems for the state. If the election is a close one, which at this point I seriously doubt given Trump has never managed to remain ahead in the polling for even a single week, it could result in a very nasty constitutional crisis. The last time we has such an occurrence, the winner Al Gore, bowed out for sake of the nation.
I think the more likely situation is Trump loses and loses by large margins. It will be readily apparent Trump lost to all but his believers. What then? There are many Trump devotees, fed by his extremism, who think of this as an apocalyptic event. Some have even stated, if Trump loses they will begin a revolution. Trump has appealed to the basest elements in our nature and that make Trump a very dangerous and irresponsible man.

I don’t expect Trump will make the traditional call to the opposition acknowledging defeat. The Donald never admits defeat. It goes against his narcissistic nature as well as his business interests.

When Trump losses, there may very well be right wing kooks who want to stage a revolution and some may actually go through with it. I hope they don't kill anyone, but in any case, we have a great prison system from which they can spend their remaining lives living out their fantasies of oppression. I don't think these folks will amount to much given more responsible Republicans like Pence and Ryan have both indicated they will acknowledge and respect the election results.

So what happens to the Republican Party? I think the party fragments. I don't think Trump will go away. Neither trump nor his supporters are going away anytime soon. We will still have an apocalyptic group of folks running around after the election and Trump will probably still be leading them. Trump lives for the adoration of his fans. Trump's narcissism is an addiction from which he will never be able to divorce himself. So where does that leave the Republican Party? It's a scary thing. Trump could well become the face of the Republican Party going forward. I think it would be a smaller party; perhaps 20% to 30% smaller, but still America's second largest political party.

More moderate Republicans like Ryan and Pence would essentially have to make some decisions; either they tolerate Trump, split the party, or become Democrats. I’m not sure how that plays out. So how does this play out?

PS: To all the Russian trolls out there, and you know who you are, this thread isn’t an outlet for your Russian anti-US propaganda. Trolling is a violation of forum rules. And to all others, please do not feed the trolls.
 
Trump will go away (not from the airways but from politics). That is if he loses which I think he will.

Since there are really only two parties in the country elections are generally very close as you either vote for Clinton or you vote for Trump. So, it is very possible for him to win just as he made it this far (surprisingly).

I have to think that there is still enough sense out there in the electorate (rather than rage) to not elect Trump.
 
The way it played out in the past, when the shitball the Republicans presented actually won and then blew up in their faces (Reagan, W), was simply to forget it ever happened, talk about something else for a while; and then, amnesia established, rewrite the history with the sucky parts omitted (or blamed on some Democrat).

Remember when Guiliani said on TV that there had never been a serious terrorist attack against Americans when W was President? A couple of years from now the version of Trump's campaign we get from the Republicans on TV - and most of the TV itself - will be as one side of a both sides campaign that went negative because of the media, and Trump had a lot of good ideas if only the media hadn't been so biased.

Unless we can somehow get this thing nailed to their foreheads, and never let them forget.
 
Repost [Updated] in Two Parts

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joepistole said:
So what will the Republican Party look like after 2016 and why? But whatever happens, I think the Republican Party as we have known it is dead. What happens to the Republican entertainment industry?
Click to expand...

To use a video game metaphor: The Republican Party will get some much-needed cosmic credit to spend when the ... uh ... strange collection of factions including people like Lindsey Graham and John Kasich, Rob Portman, Paul Ryan, and others have to throw down against the civic unrest invoked by Trump supporters when they lose. And, sure that sounds to a certain degree like stuffing the basket full of deplorables, but the candidate himself is already appealing to the illegitimacy of his impending loss:

The dangerous part of all this is that Trump's idea of "unshackling" means undermining the legitimacy of the election that he is poised to lose. At rallies in Pennsylvania this week, Trump has made the most pointed case yet that the only way he can lose the presidency is if it is stolen from him through voter fraud.

More specifically, he insisted that Pennsylvania will be wrongly wrested from his grasp due to shenanigans in Philadelphia. "We have to make sure we're protected. We have to make sure the people of Philadelphia are protected, that the vote counts are 100 percent," Trump said in Wilkes-Barre. "I hear these horror shows and we have to make sure that this election is not stolen from us and is not taken away from us. And everybody knows what I'm talking about."

What he's talking about, but what he won't actually say, is that Philadelphia's largely black electorate will commit voter fraud. He's been dog-whistling this message for months, telling his almost entirely white base to deputize themselves as poll watchers and go to "certain areas" and "other communities" in Pennsylvania to keep an eye out for fraud.​

Simon Maloy's↱ report on the Wilkes-Barre appearance last week seems to have gotten lost in the noise surrounding questions regarding Donald Trump's apparent fealty to Russia, in which case perhaps his subsequent report for Salon↱ ("Donald Trump is not a Target store: Sorry, Trump donors, you're not entitled to a refund"), or the NBC News↱ headline he mocks in the opening paragraph ("Major GOP Donors Are Asking Trump for Their Money Back"), seem merely moments to enjoy the schadenfreude:

The triggering event for all this was the recently revealed tape of Trump boasting in 2005 that he uses his celebrity status to sexually assault women without consequence. "I cannot express my disappointment enough regarding the recent events surrounding Mr. Trump," wrote one in an email obtained by NBC. "As a father of two daughters preparing for marriage, I am repulsed by his comments regarding women."

The other donor wrote: "His comments in regards to the female gender are very childish and embarrassing in today's society. How am I suppose [sic] to respect and support Mr. Trump with his attitude towards women?"

Those concerns and questions are absolutely legitimate. Of course, they were no less legitimate two weeks ago, two months ago or two years ago. They were certainly legitimate when these two donors cut their first checks for Trump and started raising money for him. Donald Trump has been a sexist lout for the entirety of his life in the public eye. His presidential campaign has been saturated with gross sexism from the get-go. That audiotape of Trump bragging about how he forces himself on women was shocking only because he was freely and proudly admitting to sexual assault, but it certainly wasn't out of character for the Republican nominee.

Now that they've arrived at the belated realization that Trump is a sexist and morally vacant goon, these donors are responding the only way they know how: by trying to reclaim the financial assistance they provided the selfsame sexist goon. Unfortunately for these donors, their refund requests probably aren't going anywhere.​

But th is is also worth considering in the question of the GOP post-electoral psyche↗, and whether we hear a complaint that "Republican voters were denied their voice, thus a conspiracy raised trump to the nomination".

The New York Times wrote it up as Trump trying to unnerve Hillary, but a report from Patrick Healy and Maggie Haberman↱ late last month includes Donald Trump sketching a delegitimization argument in the wake of his disastrous first debate:

Mr. Trump, aiming to unnerve Mrs. Clinton, even indicated that he was rethinking his statement at their last debate that he would "absolutely" support her if she won in November, saying: "We're going to have to see. We're going to see what happens. We're going to have to see."​

You know, frequently in American politics we offer platitudes about how we all are on the same side―America―even if we disagree. I've known at least a few conservatives over the years determined to test that principle, and hopefully this terrible episode of the GOP nominating Donald Trump will be the proverbial rock bottom, because we are well past the realm of making excuses: There are still among prominent Republicans those who will say incredibly stupid things↱ like, "I am supporting the Republican nominee because I think Hillary Clinton is an absolute disaster", much like the voters who say they're not down with all the bigotry but they like that Trump says what he wants, or those strange factions through history that want us to believe they're on the side of justice but keep telling people why it has to wait―e.g., the Gay Fray, and the idea that sure, one supports human and civil rights, but this is all happening too fast and it makes the people who disagree uncomfortable so, you know, we kind of need you to wait (except, you know, we won, and now we have no excuses for why everyone else who's been waiting for the comfort of bigots and fools doesn't get the same), but I digress.

What will the GOP establishment and its traditional rank and file do? If Donald Trump's legions bring violence in response to the election, what does the GOP do?

With luck―sorry, RNC―there won't be significant problems. However, if shit gets really bad and the Republican establishment responds pretty much exactly correctly from the outset and all the way through, the GOP will find healthy life after Trump, and reasonably strong prospects heading into the midterm.

It's the weirdest thing; this might be the ultimate Republican maneuver where they paint themselves into such a corner that their best bet is to pray for disaster so they can be seen heroically prancing about a pretense of duty. And if there was any fundamental justice about the Universe ... well, why worry about such pretentious artifice?

Something like that. We'll have to see how bad things get before the election in order to comprehend the hole the GOP will be in, Trump-card violence or no.

†​

On a related note, I would recall the aforementioned donors who want their money back: I, too, am a father of a daughter, and it really doesn't matter what I might think about the fact that such conservatives needed this episode to (ahem!) figure it out; they are, at least, better off than Rep. Blake Farenthold, about whom the less said ... well, no, there is nothing acceptable about that particular gaffe, which qualifies as kinsley.

Samantha Bee explains:

Bee berated members of the Republican Party who still supported Trump—like vice presidential nominee Mike Pence and Sen. Mitch McConnell—but lambasted the fact that they denounced Trump by saying they themselves are the fathers, brothers and sons of actual human women.

"Trump's comments are not wrong because you have female relatives," said Bee, noting that 100 percent of Americans have female relatives. "Trump's comments were wrong because women are human and if you hadn't stood cravenly by while he insulted them for a year, then you wouldn't be in the pile of elephant shit you are today."

(qtd. in Guarnieri↱; boldface accent added)​
 
Notes for #4↑:

Caldwell, Leigh Ann. "Major GOP Donors Are Asking Trump for Their Money Back". NBC News. 11 October 2016. NBCNews.com. 12 October 2016. http://nbcnews.to/2dbPZdA

Carney, Jordain. "Cruz: I'm still backing Trump". The Hill. 10 October 2016. TheHill.com. 12 October 2016. http://bit.ly/2e8IbtV

Guarnieri, Grace. "Samantha Bee thinks Republicans upset over Donald Trump’s sexism don’t get it: 'The comments were wrong because women are human'". Salon. 11 October 2016. Salon.com. 12 October 2016. http://bit.ly/2dXznIT

Healy, Patrick and Maggie Haberman. "Donald Trump Opens New Line of Attack on Hillary Clinton: Her Marriage". The New York Times. 30 September 2016. NYTimes.com. 12 October 2016. http://nyti.ms/2e6fEKY

Maloy, Simon. "Donald Trump goes rogue: Suggesting that Pennsylvania will have voter fraud, Trump’s undermining the system". Salon. 11 October 2016. Salon.com. 12 October 2016. http://bit.ly/2dXsbwq

—————. "Donald Trump is not a Target store: Sorry, Trump donors, you’re not entitled to a refund". Salon. 12 October 2016. Salon.com. 12 October 2016. http://bit.ly/2dKr8BH
 
The future (yet somehow horrible) irony of "Trump 2.0" and "Trump 2.1" may become apparent at some point.

Or to go all Will Shakespeare on it: "What of the bastard's children, my lady?"
 
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