Nevertheless, I still have my lifelong interest in politics, even if I don’t say much about it. After studying it formally in university, and informally ever since, and with hands-on experience in two countries, it’s fair to say that I have some opinions about political stuff.
Today’s post is about a series of related questions from Roger Green, and I’ve numbered my answers to make them easier to follow. Here are the questions:
Here are a few softballs for you about the US 2024 election cycle:
1. Who will be the Republican presidential candidate? Who should be?
2. Who will be the Democratic presidential candidate? Who should be?
3. Will djt have a lock on the GOP nom after Super Tuesday in early March?
4. Will there be a viable third-party candidate, and will Joe Manchin be on the ticket?
5. While we're at it, who will win the House and Senate?
6. Finally, if djt is elected, are we doomed?
1. “Who will be the Republican presidential candidate? Who should be?” I don’t see any Republican capable of preventing the party’s Dear Leader from winning the nomination, much as sane people would hope there could be. He has a stranglehold on the his base, and every Republican candidate is a distant also-ran because they’re trying to be just like their Dear Leader, which raises two questions: If they’re so busy praising him, why are they even running? And second, why on earth would cultists choose an imitation when they can stick with the real thing? The only candidate not running with his lips pressed to the orange posterior is Chris Christie, which is precisely why he’ll just be a footnote in the history of the 2024 campaign.
Who “should” the nominee? Who cares? All Republican politicians are now vassals of their Dear Leader, or hypocritical cowards too frightened to be honest about the existential threat their Dear Leader truly is to the USA. The party as a whole is fast sliding downhill into full-blown fascism, so does it really matter who they nominate? Nobody else could possibly win the nomination.
2. “Who will be the Democratic presidential candidate? Who should be?” The Democratic candidate will be President Joe Biden. I have no opinion about who “should” be the party’s nominee, mostly because it’s academic: The decision is made. Also, without credible opposition in the primaries, no candidates are being vetted, so there’s no realistic way to evaluate and compare non-existent rivals. It’s worth nothing that Joe wasn’t my first choice, and he probably wouldn’t be right now, were he not president, and that doesn’t matter: He wasn’t my first choice, but he’s my only choice.
3. “Will djt have a lock on the GOP nom after Super Tuesday in early March?” I haven’t looked at the Republican nomination process for 2024—mostly because the end result is all but over before it begins—however, it’s certain that the party’s Dear Leader will have the nomination locked up very early on. Having said that, I’m sceptical it’ll be officially over by March. It’s entirely possible, though unlikely, that Haley could gain enough votes in early states to drag the process out a bit more.
4. “Will there be a viable third-party candidate, and will Joe Manchin be on the ticket?” The first part is easy: No, there won’t be any viable third-party candidates. That’s because the system is set-up to ensure only a Republican or Democrat can possibly win enough Electoral College votes. If “viable” is used to mean syphoning off enough votes to deny either the Republican or Democratic candidate enough votes to have an Electoral College majority, then, sure, that could happen.
There’s an important point here: A third-party candidate who’s viable in this sense is most likely to take votes from the Republican nominee because the people who have the most desperate need for a third party candidate are Republicans who cannot bring themselves to vote for any Democrat, but don’t want to vote for their party’s nominee. Also, most of the expected third-party candidates so far skew Right, at least in some important ways. Disaffected Democrats, on the other hand, skew Left, and if they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for President Biden, they’d be most likely to stay home or throw their vote away as a protest vote for the Green candidate. However, I don’t see that happening.
Democrats outperformed expectations in 2018, 2020, and 2022, precisely because the same voters the newsmedia claims are disaffected now voted Democratic to stop the fascistic tendencies and agenda of the Republican Party and its Dear Leader. Those voters aren’t stupid, and they know the huge uphill battle that still remains to preserve US democracy and the Constitution, and they’re not going to throw up their hands because of Republican propaganda or shallow and lazy newsmedia commentary.
5. “While we're at it, who will win the House and Senate?” Democrats will re-take the US House, and will retain the US Senate. The reason for the House is that Republicans' gerrymandered maps are being thrown out all over the country, and 2024 will have a much fairer district boundaries, and fair maps always help Democrats—and democracy itself, for that matter. The Senate will be because of the same over-performance by Democrats that we saw in 2018, 2020, and 2022. The stakes are too high, and voters understand that Republicans persistently refuse to stand up for democracy and the rule of law, and the few policy ideas they promote—like a total nationwide ban on all abortions—are opposed by a massive majority of voters. And, of course, Senate races can’t be gerrymandered like House races, all of which which puts Republicans at a disadvantage.
6. “Finally, if djt is elected, are we doomed?” Absolutely. 100%. No doubt whatsoever. He has taken off his mask (hood?) and shown everyone the actual fascist beneath it, and the Republican Party that is now his personality cult is absolutely okay with him becoming a dictator. People often say, “the Supreme Court will stop him.” Yeah, right. It’s not just that the Court is itself under far-right Republican control, it’s that he’s made clear he plans to act unilaterally and outside the Constitution. If the Court rules against him, he’ll just ignore it and do what he wants: The Supreme Court has absolutely no means to enforce its rulings and depends entirely on the Executive Branch for enforcement. With the Executive Branch controlled by a fascistic dictator, there’ll be no one to enforce their orders. Congress could impeach him again and this time convict him—and he’d ignore it. Who would stop him? Who could stop him? Secession and civil war could then be a possibility, but his ego would probably have him nuke Los Angeles or some other major city run by Democrats.
That’s the nightmare scenario, obviously, but I think it’s also the unlikely outcome. As I’ve said, it’s more likely than not that he loses yet again, and he’d be left to spend the rest of his life, or at least until his dementia gets even worse, railing about—well, everything he’s been railing about for the past three years.
Rather than ending this post with such a dark subject, here’s one more question from Roger that’s—well, not lighter, exactly, but far less dire:
Suppose you are an American university president testifying before Congress, answering questions about antisemitism. How would you answer the committee's questions?
Perhaps by definition, university presidents are terrible at anything but marketing. They spend so much time selling their university to big donors and corporate sponsors that they don’t really know how to give a straight answer to any question. Having said that, Republicans in Congress almost never ask a question in good faith: They intend every question as an attack and an opportunity for a gotcha. The university presidents should have had some coaching before their appearance to prepare them to deal with the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the Republicans pretending to question them.
That said, how hard could it be to answer directly, rather than talking about violations of university policy? There’s no conflict between condemning hate speech, or speech veering close to it, and upholding people’s right to say offensive things. I have no idea how I’d answer the questions because I didn’t watch them being delivered, but that’s pretty much the point I’d try to make. I have no illusions that there’d be anything whatsoever that anyone could say that would satisfy the grandstanding Republican politicians—who miraculously!—only just started caring about anti-semitism when they saw an opportunity to attack others. Sure, they might have wanted to first look at some of the anti-Semitic things their own party caucus mates have said, were they honest in their outrage. It also might have been entertaining to see a university president point that hypocrisy out to them, but it would’ve made the politicians’ already frenzied performative outrage rise to an even higher level of intensity—and stupidity.
The bottom line, though, is that whole charade was nothing but political theatre, and there was absolutely no answer the presidents could’ve given that would have stopped the Republican attack, no matter how good and on point their response was. But those folks clearly really needed coaching.
Thanks to Roger for today’s questions! Next time, something completely different, though Roger will return later in the series.
All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-23”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.
Previously:
”Let the annual inquisition begin” – The first post in this year’s series.
”Ask Arthur 2023, Part 1: Get here from there”
”Ask Arthur 2023, Part 2: Measuring and measured”
3 comments:
At the time, the only way to answer ES's question was to ask her to define hate speech. "Is 'from the river to the sea" hate speech,' e,g.? There was a case at Cornell that was clearly hate speech, and it was clearly and correctly dealt with. I'd use that example, which was national news.
I might riff on this for my 20 Jan post.
I don't actually remember the controversy being reported here at all, however, two (maybe more) Green Party MPs, both of whom I've had respect for, used the river/sea thing to condemn the way Netanyahu is waging his war, and they denied it was anti-semitic. Neither one of them has ever struck me as bigoted against anyone (despite what NZ's Rightwingers like to claim), however, as NZ's politics become more and more divided, and our hard-Right takes more and more of its talking points from the USA's extreme Right, it's becoming nearly impossible to have a rational and nuanced discussion. However, clear and unambiguous hate speech toward either side from actual New Zealanders (as opposed to people pretending to be on Twitter, etc), is rare.
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