American Politics Thread

[Ryoma Maser]

2016 - Gary Johnson (I was a never trumper before they had a name. Silly in retrospect, but legal weed and I would have voted for Clinton if I lived in a state where my vote mattered)

Woah! Hanzo!?

Also yeah, if I could've voted in 2016, which I couldn't cause I wasn't eighteen yet I would've most likely voted Gary Johnson since he was the only person I liked among the 2016 election though I don't agree with legal weed. Though regardless if I felt was he okay, I didn't like anyone who was running in the 2016 election.

 

[Volphied]

I'm sorry to tell you progressives but never Trumpers made the difference between Biden and a second Trump term.

We'll see. The fact that the majority of the Dem congressmen who lost their seats were moderates while unashamed progressives kept their seats tells me it's a more complicated picture (and Trump increased his GOP vote in 2020 compared with 2016 by boosting turnout from 90 to 93 percent), so I'm not in a rush to thank the opportunists at the Lincoln Project. (In fact, an argument can be made that they did more damage than good by wasting tens of millions of dollars that would have done more on downballot races.) Either way, Georgia will be an interesting study on who was right once we see how the runoff goes without Trump's name on the ticket.


View: https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1326233680319303681

4. For the first time in my life, I voted for a winner! Only took four elections and three different parties to do so. If you're wondering:

2008 - John McCain
2012 - Mitt Romney (I've mentioned it before, but I volunteered on his campaign)
2016 - Gary Johnson (I was a never trumper before they had a name. Silly in retrospect, but legal weed and I would have voted for Clinton if I lived in a state where my vote mattered)
2020 - Joe Biden

You voted for Johnson because of his policy on marijuana? But IIRC both Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008 were very opposed to legalizing it. McCain called it a "gateway drug" and wanted to declare a "war" on it while Romney outright stated that he wants to ban any recreational use of it. They may have "evolved" their views later on, but I'm certain it wasn't during their presidential runs.

 

[WyndonCalling]

Since Trump came to power, I've not made many friends for my extreme reluctance to describe him using words like 'fascist', 'dictator' or 'Nazi'. I've never considered it accurate or useful for the kind of serious analysis about how to beat him, and I've worried that it gets the powder damp when the power of those words should be reserved for someone worse, not merely a garden-variety, crude nativist, a crass xenophobe.

But this? These past two weeks? It's absolutely banana republic president-for-life stuff. In a system with weaker checks in place he may well have succeeded in his attempts to cling to power; the only reason he's not an actual dictator is that in a short while he'll be gone, forevermore a wannabe-Mugabe.

 

[Volphied]

Since Trump came to power, I've not made many friends for my extreme reluctance to describe him using words like 'fascist', 'dictator' or 'Nazi'. I've never considered it accurate or useful for the kind of serious analysis about how to beat him, and I've worried that it gets the powder damp when the power of those words should be reserved for someone worse, not merely a garden-variety, crude nativist, a crass xenophobe.

But this? These past two weeks? It's absolutely banana republic president-for-life stuff. In a system with weaker checks in place he may well have succeeded in his attempts to cling to power; the only reason he's not an actual dictator is that in a short while he'll be gone, forevermore a wannabe-Mugabe.

He doesn't have total power to be called a dictator (he can only be a wannabe-dictator at most), and nazism is too narrow and specific to apply to him, but I never found any issue with calling him a fascist. Especially after Umberto Eco predicted the current era of far-right populists with his essay on "Ur-Fascism". To quote from it:

Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola.

But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

The entire article is well worth a read, but it boils down to these points. When looking at them, I can clearly see Trump and his sycophants covering more than half of them:

• The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
• The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
• The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
• Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
• Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
• Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
• The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
• The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
• Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
• Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
• Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
• Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
• Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
• Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

 

[Beth Pavell]

Since Trump came to power, I've not made many friends for my extreme reluctance to describe him using words like 'fascist', 'dictator' or 'Nazi'. I've never considered it accurate or useful for the kind of serious analysis about how to beat him, and I've worried that it gets the powder damp when the power of those words should be reserved for someone worse, not merely a garden-variety, crude nativist, a crass xenophobe.

But this? These past two weeks? It's absolutely banana republic president-for-life stuff. In a system with weaker checks in place he may well have succeeded in his attempts to cling to power; the only reason he's not an actual dictator is that in a short while he'll be gone, forevermore a wannabe-Mugabe.

Indeed, yes - although for me the tipping point came with his willingness to deploy the police against his political opponents. I've always maintained I don't have a horse in this race - and as a Brit, I don't - but it is a relief on behalf of my American friends that this isn't set to be a regular occurrence.

 

[omahanime]

Lock Him Up? Here’s The Real Reason Trump Is Afraid Of Leaving The White House

 

[Hector]

We'll see. The fact that the majority of the Dem congressmen who lost their seats were moderates while unashamed progressives kept their seats tells me it's a more complicated picture (and Trump increased his GOP vote in 2020 compared with 2016 by boosting turnout from 90 to 93 percent), so I'm not in a rush to thank the opportunists at the Lincoln Project. (In fact, an argument can be made that they did more damage than good by wasting tens of millions of dollars that would have done more on downballot races.) Either way, Georgia will be an interesting study on who was right once we see how the runoff goes without Trump's name on the ticket.


You voted for Johnson because of his policy on marijuana? But IIRC both Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008 were very opposed to legalizing it. McCain called it a "gateway drug" and wanted to declare a "war" on it while Romney outright stated that he wants to ban any recreational use of it. They may have "evolved" their views later on, but I'm certain it wasn't during their presidential runs.

So one thing to keep in mind is that many of those progressives sit in safe blue seats where they weren't going to lose. AOC for example won her seat by 40 points because of where her district is in NYC (I've lived in NYC since 2013 and let me just say that I'm frankly surprised the Republican even got 30% of the vote from said district). Whereas many of the moderates who lost seats lost them in swing districts due to the fact that House Republicans outperformed their polling (and their performance in the 2018 midterms).One thing that will make the question of why Democrats under performed difficult to answer is that in this pandemic election we did not get good exit polls. But your take (well Doug Jones') is on the money in terms of long term party growth. 2020's coalition is not one that the Democrats can rely on in the future, so their longterm play is to build a strong ground game, support local people in local races (for example if they had a Latin version of Stacy Abrams in Miami-Dade this year, they probably would have won Florida), and really work on their digital outreach and advertising. I'd have to find the quote, but one thing that AOC nailed in the days after the election was the fact that so many of the moderates who lost their races had next to no digital ad presence or marketing. One has to hope that Democrats finally learn how to win.

As for the notion of the Lincoln Project having wasted money that would have gone to downballot races... I would point out that I'm sure the majority of their donations (again, always hard to say) came from lost GOP souls who wanted Trump out but a Republican senate (Democratic activists and donors probably just donated to Biden or their chosen candidates directly). And the thing with the share of Republicans is that the number of registered Republicans has dropped in the last four years as many moderates have switched their registrations (while exact numbers here aren't easy to find, what I can find is that the share of registered republicans as a share of the electorate has dropped around two percentage points since 2016). So those people probably didn't want Democrats to win downballot races.

As for the Johnson thing, that was a little tongue in cheek (I did say that I was firing some HOT TAKES!). It wasn't just the legal weed thing, it was a couple other things (a less interventionist foreign policy for instance) as well. Of course the big thing was that at the time I still considered myself right of center but Trump was just so... The guy cheats at golf and to a golfer like myself, that's simply unacceptable. 2016 was the election that started my movement from right center to left center. I'm still extremely pro-legalization though (and it seems like that is only a matter of time).

And I'm in complete agreement re: Georgia. Those two runoff races are going to be very, very interesting. And they would be even if control of the senate wasn't on the line.

 

[Volphied]

As for the notion of the Lincoln Project having wasted money that would have gone to downballot races... I would point out that I'm sure the majority of their donations (again, always hard to say) came from lost GOP souls who wanted Trump out but a Republican senate

How do those people deal with the fact that a Republican senate is essentially a Trump senate with senators like Graham openly assisting him? I mean look at this, the GOP has been completely co-opted by Trump and is now boosting his coup attempt:

View: https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1329771592440836104

It wasn't just the legal weed thing, it was a couple other things (a less interventionist foreign policy for instance) as well.

Sorry, but that doesn't make sense to me either, since McCain promoted his so-called "rogue state rollback" where he'd arm, train and equip rebels in order to overthrown any county he wished to. McCain also brought with him neo-conservative warmongers from the Bush administration like Robert Kagan and William Kristol. McCain said he'd be fine if US troops remained in Iraq for even a hundred years and would then later cheer on Obama's intervention in Libya.

Romney, likewise, was also heavy on interventions, and went on air criticizing Obama for withdrawing troops from Iraq. He also criticized Obama for not sending ground troops to Libya. Romney was also in favor of sending weapons to "moderate" Syrian rebels. Remember his "No Apology" book, where he championed "hard power" interventions?

For all his faults, Obama from the start seemed to me as the less interventionist one compared to them both. It was Obama who reached the historic nuclear deal with Iran, while all Republicans criticized him and Trump ripped it apart to GOP cheers.

2016 was the election that started my movement from right center to left center.

I mean, this just might be because I'm not an American, but from where I am the Democratic party was the right-center party. Even during the Bush era, the GOP was the solidly right-wing party that always had war hawks and evangelical fundamentalists. This doesn't mean that there weren't those kind of people among Dems too, but I've always found it absurd how some tried to paint Dems as a leftist party. Bernie Sanders is considered left center in Europe.

I still don't see any evidence that the Lincoln project had any effect on Republican voters. Even you admit that you started your own shift back in 2016. Lincoln project was nowhere back then. It all seemed to me that their ads only played for those Republicans who hated Trump from the start. I'd love to be proved wrong, but so far I only see the Republican base joining Trump in his conspiratorial belief that the election was stolen from him. And that's horrible news for the future of democracy and the rule of law in the USA.

Spoiler

 

[Dorothy]

Hoping they can get him locked up for something, and thus preventing a 2024 run.

Imprisoning him doesn't stop him from running. With that said: he won't be imprisoned.

 

[Hector]

How do those people deal with the fact that a Republican senate is essentially a Trump senate with senators like Graham openly assisting him? I mean look at this, the GOP has been completely co-opted by Trump and is now boosting his coup attempt:

View: https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1329771592440836104


Sorry, but that doesn't make sense to me either, since McCain promoted his so-called "rogue state rollback" where he'd arm, train and equip rebels in order to overthrown any county he wished to. McCain also brought with him neo-conservative warmongers from the Bush administration like Robert Kagan and William Kristol. McCain said he'd be fine if US troops remained in Iraq for even a hundred years and would then later cheer on Obama's intervention in Libya.

Romney, likewise, was also heavy on interventions, and went on air criticizing Obama for withdrawing troops from Iraq. He also criticized Obama for not sending ground troops to Libya. Romney was also in favor of sending weapons to "moderate" Syrian rebels. Remember his "No Apology" book, where he championed "hard power" interventions?

For all his faults, Obama from the start seemed to me as the less interventionist one compared to them both. It was Obama who reached the historic nuclear deal with Iran, while all Republicans criticized him and Trump ripped it apart to GOP cheers.

I mean, this just might be because I'm not an American, but from where I am the Democratic party was the right-center party. Even during the Bush era, the GOP was the solidly right-wing party that always had war hawks and evangelical fundamentalists. This doesn't mean that there weren't those kind of people among Dems too, but I've always found it absurd how some tried to paint Dems as a leftist party. Bernie Sanders is considered left center in Europe.

I still don't see any evidence that the Lincoln project had any effect on Republican voters. Even you admit that you started your own shift back in 2016. Lincoln project was nowhere back then. It all seemed to me that their ads only played for those Republicans who hated Trump from the start. I'd love to be proved wrong, but so far I only see the Republican base joining Trump in his conspiratorial belief that the election was stolen from him. And that's horrible news for the future of democracy and the rule of law in the USA.

Spoiler

View attachment 137739

I honestly couldn't tell you how those people deal with what the GOP has come. Just one of the many reasons I walked and am never going back.

As for the McCain vs Romney vs Johnson argument, I was pretty unclear previously about the simple fact that my views on issues changed over the years in college (My views on issues of foreign policy and legalization and a bunch of other things had moved from US center right to US center left but I still considered myself a moderate republican until 2016 because my stances were in line with New England republicanism, which is your fiscal conservative, socially liberal wing of the party which has basically died out in the Trump era).

As for using center left versus center right, yeah I'm defining it on the US scale because well...this is a US election thread. A discussion about the American Overton window and how on earth it can shift back towards center is for another place and another time, especially since I don't think anybody has an answer to that impossible question.

In terms of the project / republican base, the problem with that sort of poll is that the people who self selected out of that poll by either voting for Biden or abstaining wouldn't be counted on that question. No disagreement on how terrifying that poll is though. The fact that a majority of Republicans think the election was stolen is frankly an existential crisis for the American experiment.

The funny thing about commentary from outside of the US on these issues is that in many ways it is both very on point (in that you're mostly removed from US news media biases unless you want to subject yourself to the torture that is CNN and the like, something I don't recommend) in terms of being able to state things that Americans in various positions simply can't due to the cultural zeitgeist and whatnot. But at the same time, it is difficult to sometimes explain conditions on the ground (especially outside of the urban centers that produce the vast majority of our cultural exports) to non Americans.

The biggest thing that I noticed you took umbrage with was the neo-conservatism that I believed in during my earlier days compared to now. I hate to be that guy (even though I was that guy for a decent portion of my life), but growing up in America in the post 9/11 era (I was 11 years old at the time) warped so much of my generation in terms of how we saw the rest of the world. One of the things that I think many people forget (both inside and outside of the United States) is that at the time, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had near universal approval in establishment politics (I'd have to look up what the final vote tallies were, but I think only two or three house and senate members voted against the wars). And the media and everyone else rallied around the flag. It was very similar to the Cold War in retrospect where America was almost in a wartime environment culturally and nobody in the establishment really questioned it.

So for my formative years, the neo-conservative foreign policy was the dominant one (in terms of voting for Presidents, you didn't really have a choice. Obama wasn't any less of a war hawk than McCain or Romney, and the amount of drone strikes the Obama admin was responsible for is staggering). So to answer your question of how I went from McCain / Romney to Johnson, when their viewpoints on foreign wars are so different, it's because my views on foreign wars changed dramatically. I'll tell you that it's a hell of a thing to break a decade of conditioning, which is something that I think many of our non-American friends fail to see when analyzing American elections and political trends. The simple fact is that a huge portion of my generation (people in their mid 20s to mid 30s) were conditioned to think a certain way, and only in the last few years are those trends reversing themselves.

 

[zoroarctic]

I mean, this just might be because I'm not an American, but from where I am the Democratic party was the right-center party. Even during the Bush era, the GOP was the solidly right-wing party that always had war hawks and evangelical fundamentalists. This doesn't mean that there weren't those kind of people among Dems too, but I've always found it absurd how some tried to paint Dems as a leftist party. Bernie Sanders is considered left center in Europe.

This entire time I never realized you were European.

 

[TechSkylander1518]

Since Trump came to power, I've not made many friends for my extreme reluctance to describe him using words like 'fascist', 'dictator' or 'Nazi'. I've never considered it accurate or useful for the kind of serious analysis about how to beat him, and I've worried that it gets the powder damp when the power of those words should be reserved for someone worse, not merely a garden-variety, crude nativist, a crass xenophobe.

But this? These past two weeks? It's absolutely banana republic president-for-life stuff. In a system with weaker checks in place he may well have succeeded in his attempts to cling to power; the only reason he's not an actual dictator is that in a short while he'll be gone, forevermore a wannabe-Mugabe.

It's interesting to me that you say that, because I personally consider the stuff to be just one tier down from his worst actions. Awful and should be punished, skews reality for his base, but doesn't actually change anything because he can't actually follow through on it. (Like his claims that "I really won the popular vote in 2016 if you discount the votes from illegal immigrants" or "We should deport those congresswomen")

In terms of fear that he'd try for a president-for-life, I was more concerned when he'd say stuff like "And then we'll go for a third term because I'm entitled to it after they tried to impeach me," or "If you want to make the fake news really angry chant eight more years". But even then, what makes me willing to call him a fascist isn't so much his power grabs as it is:

• His use and promotion of violence against political enemies, or even just people in his way
  • Martin Gugino was shoved to the ground by cops and left with brain damage for just walking up to them, but because he's part of the BLM movement, Trump said that "Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?" (Worth mentioning that he tries to get antifa labeled as terrorists)
  • Great job last night at the White House by the U.S. @SecretService. They were not only totally professional, but very cool. I was inside, watched every move, and couldn’t have felt more safe. They let the “protesters” scream & rant as much as they wanted, but whenever someone........got too frisky or out of line, they would quickly come down on them, hard - didn’t know what hit them. The front line was replaced with fresh agents, like magic. Big crowd, professionally organized, but nobody came close to breaching the fence. If they had they would........have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least. Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action. “We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it, and........good practice.”
• Painting himself as this flawless, all-powerful figure, the only one to trust, where acts against him are treason
  • "Well, I don’t think science knows, actually."
  • "I’m the only thing standing between the American Dream and total anarchy, madness, and chaos."
  • Q Where is the conclusive medical evidence of that, sir?
    
    THE PRESIDENT: I don’t want to wait a year and a half to find out. And only CNN would ask that question. Fake news. Go ahead.
  • As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!).
  • He accused Shiff of treason for "making up his call" ("It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for Treason?"), and Obama of treason for "spying on his campaign"( ObamaBiden illegally spied on the Trump Campaign, both before and after the election. Treason!), when, even if those accusations were true, neither is treason- treason is against the country, not a political figure. ("Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason") By saying that these actions would be treason, it seems to me that he's arguing that loyalty to the US requires loyalty to the president.
• Using minority scapegoats and talking about removing them from the country
  • He literally said at a rally he'd look at what he could do to get rid of Muslims, and he tried for that Muslim ban, then settled for banning Muslim-majority countries
  • He called for non-white congresswomen to "go back to the crime infested countries from which they came," and three of them were born in the US, the only immigrant having come when she was 8.
    • I reread my post and realized I mentioned this as something that was also not-quite-fascist earlier, lol, so to clarify I'm more concerned here with him promoting the idea that not white=not from America=go back to your country, while the actual legal idea of deporting doesn't seem to have any actual weight behind it to be a threat
  • There's literally children dying in camps. (A problem that didn't start under Trump, to be sure, but he's definitely not opposed to it)

I know historical definitions of fascism vary, but I feel like "A man who expects extreme loyalty, encourages violence against political foes, attacks minorities and tries to remove them from the country" fits pretty cleanly with that label.

Although, I feel like there needs to be a word to make it easier to distinguish between a person whose political beliefs are fascist and someone actually carrying it out, like the different between murderous and murderer, because even as awful as Trump is, there are fascists a lot worse who accomplish much more of what they want, and they should have a stronger word to emphasize their actions. There is a valuable distinction between how bad things are now and how others can have things considerably worse, and we can't let people decide that, "Well, fascists can't be that hard to deal with. I mean, we voted out Trump, right?"

 

[prog rocker]

Looks like The Clash was wrong; Rudy CAN fail after all.

They weren't wrong. They said Rudie can't fail, not Rudy. Who knew a few letters could make a difference?

 

[Volphied]

This entire time I never realized you were European.

Really? I'm public about my country of residence on my profile page, lol. Living in the so-called "Russian sphere of influence" means that most people I know IRL were over the past 4 years watching in horror as the US president sucked up to Putin and actively sabotaged the EU and NATO.

I've been paying attention to US politics since Obama got first elected after defeating McCain and that proto-Trump, Sarah Palin. There's absolutely a clear line from Palin to Trump. They both were courting the same hyper-partisan, anti-compromise and conspirational crowd. I still remember how 10 years ago some people on this forum were parroting the latest fearmongering from Glenn Beck. The current rot in political discourse in the US has been long in the making. Trump was peddling birtherism back then, and calling the last three elections "fraudulent" (less we forget, he accused Hillary of getting 3 million "illegitimate" votes).

 

[zoroarctic]

Really? I'm public about my country of residence on my profile page, lol. Living in the so-called "Russian sphere of influence" means that most people I know IRL were over the past 4 years watching in horror as the US president sucked up to Putin and actively sabotaged the EU and NATO.

I've been paying attention to US politics since Obama got first elected after defeating McCain and that proto-Trump, Sarah Palin. There's absolutely a clear line from Palin to Trump. They both were courting the same hyper-partisan, anti-compromise and conspirational crowd. I still remember how 10 years ago some people on this forum were parroting the latest fearmongering from Glenn Beck. The current rot in political discourse in the US has been long in the making. Trump was peddling birtherism back then, and calling the last three elections "fraudulent" (less we forget, he accused Hillary of getting 3 million "illegitimate" votes).

You know so many of the ins and outs of my country's politics and all I know about your country is a handful of NHL players. This makes me feel so inadequate.

 

[Blockhead Pippi]

Not saying that Reddit is a credible source, but this amused me: I saw on a political subreddit that Trump supporters in Georgia are threatening to boycott the runoff election. Please do.

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

Not saying that Reddit is a credible source, but this amused me: I saw on a political subreddit that Trump supporters in Georgia are threatening to boycott the runoff election. Please do.

Good. Let them boycott it. Gives us a better chance at reclaiming the senate and taking away Mitch McConnell's power.

 

[Proxima Centauri B]

They're welcome to boycott it if they choose. Im wondering if they realize they will lose if they do that.

 

[Blockhead Pippi]

They're welcome to boycott it if they choose. Im wondering if they realize they will lose if they do that.

Shh! Shh! The walls have ears!

...In all honesty, you'd think that that would actually occur to them. Or maybe it does but they're still threatening it anyway out of preserving their inflated pride and showing their blind support to Trump. Either way, if they want to boycott the election then that's no skin off my back.

If this were Democrats boycotting though, I'd have a different opinion. I guess it sounds hypocritical of me that I would be okay with Republicans not voting but very displeased about Democrats not voting. But eh, so what that I'm a hypocrite.

 

[omahanime]

so what that I'm a hypocrite.

Compared to the pros in the GOP, you have much to learn.