2020 US Election (Part Two)
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stinkubus
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This is not a self-evident statement. Can you show your work?
Gori the Grey
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I think he's not going to have the chance. Remember, to have the chance to do this, there has to be a time when some states have been called for him, and states with enough electoral votes to put him over the top haven't yet been called but are showing him ahead. I just think that moment will at no point present itself.
That won't stop him from doing so. But it will be so utterly groundless that people will still be watching the news for the results.
It actually strikes me as more likely that as the election-day results come in, and they're not favorable to him, he'll be insisting that we wait for all the mail-in votes to be counted.
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I don't agree with that assessment, and I think that your misreading of the situation is the answer to your own question. Obama didn't win in '08 on remotely the same sentiment/message that Biden or even Clinton was running on. Obama was a highly attractive candidate in his own right, for numerous reasons. People were extremely excited about Obama, not just nationally, but internationally. Don't you remember how big of a deal he was back then? That is very different from what we have now.
Even the people who were against him were really excited about him, just in a negative way. Hannity and Co., were practically foaming at the mouth with hatred for him once they realized that they had wasted all their time bringing down Hillary. They were in full panic mode. Remember the Reverend Wright stuff and the Ayers/Weather Underground stuff, and the "clinging to guns and religion" stuff? It was a new conspiracy theory every week. Ffs, remember the bitherism??
One big part of Obama's appeal was that his campaigns' whole strategy was to be aspirational (which is why he got the Nobel Prize BTW), to allow, maybe even encourage people to project whatever they wanted out of the government/country/future onto him. So revolutionaries looked at him and they saw a revolutionary who would bring the radical change they wanted... while moderates looked at him and saw a reasonable, articulate, non-threatening black man who would finally calm/end the racial debate and get the country back on track. Everybody saw what they wanted to see... and it all started with Obama being a very attractive candidate.
So to answer your question... yes... this country can absolutely elect a revolutionary candidate... Trumps election quite literally illustrates that this country can elect any kind of candidate... but the key is the candidate has to be attractive. Not just attractive in terms of their message/platform/policy goals, but generally aspirationally, and aesthetically attractive as well.
Gori the Grey
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Let me push back a little on this. Don't conflate Trump being physically attractive to you as being the same as him being aesthetically attractive to his voters. For many voters, Trump was a beloved TV character... a "real life" Monopoly man or Scrooge McDuck, and they were attracted to that aesthetic, not simply thinking that Trump was especially good-looking, as much as being dressed in fancy suits, shiny ties, flying around in helicopters with a Eastern European model trophy wife, and basically showing off how rich and famous he was. Many voters were very taken with that aesthetic... even if they didn't think Trump had a pretty face or was in particularly good shape... they liked seeing the Trump character.
Lexicus
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Gori the Grey
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has "an aesthetic" =/= "is aesthetically pleasing"
Narz
keeping it real
I do actually.
Even I allowed myself to get a little excited.
But that was before his 8 years.
Only fools are excited about him now
I think that's well put, he allowed people to project onto him their hopes.
But the whole point is that Obama wasn't actually very revolution at all.
If he'd kept all his promises we wouldn't have had Trump. Iirc there were a fair amount of voters who voted for both
While I understand what you mean about Obama not being a revolutionary, my point isn't to say that he was... My point is that for Americans to vote for a revolutionary, they need to be someone who is very attractive, not just, or even primarily, in terms of their policies and/or substance, but in their appearance, style, etc., the superficial stuff. Without the latter, a revolutionary has no chance, because they are already swimming upstream due to their revolutionary ideals.
The more controversial and anti-status-quo the candidate is, the more important it is for the majority of people to connect emotionally with the candidate. Once people emotionally commit to a candidate, they will hand wave criticism and project whatever they want to see onto them. That's how a revolutionary candidate gets elected. As I've said previously... If Bernie Sanders looked like Gavin Newsom, he would have won easily.
Also, I don't agree that if Obama had "kept all his promises" whatever that means... that we wouldn't have ended up with Trump anyway. As an aside, as I've already alluded to, I think that people have a tendency to conflate Obama's actual "promises" with their own projections. But even putting that aside, I think its just as reasonable to conclude that if Obama had "kept all his promises", assuming that I sort of get what you are meaning by that... that we would have had an even more polarized electorate, even more eager to elect someone like Trump to "set things right" and/or "take their country back."
There's alot more problems than missing that fundamental grace, but yes, that too... absolutely.
Estebonrober
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I think having a counselor in chief is important for a nation so divided on so many issues. I think Trump proves the importance of that. Even tacit acknowledgment of the opposition’s grievances is a way of subduing that opposition. Instead we’ve seen four years of constant aggression towards the opposition now we have them calling whole areas “anarchist jurisdictions”.
That's not how revolutionaries work
Lexicus
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Idk tho. Look at the women themselves. I think they think Trump is good-looking, as strange and alien as this idea may seem to me and you.
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Its not strange at all... My Dad used to have a saying which went, roughly... "A woman can fall in love with anything, just remember that you can't bring that car inside with you."
He would explain that you could meet someone and feel head over heels in love and seem like you were meant for each other... then one day the love would just evaporate and you wouldn't know why... because it really was that she was subconsciously "in love" with that cool car you had, not you, so when you traded in the car, she lost all her passion for you without really knowing why... Or one day it would seem like the woman (or women in general) were all over you, and then next time you saw them they wouldn't give you a second glance. Well what you failed to realize is that on that particular day, you had a fancy haircut, or you were wearing the latest fashion or some flashy jewelry... and that was why you were so attractive.
So yes, absolutely... those women in the picture do find Trump attractive, but its not necessarily that they think he's so handsome, its the total package, and the wealth and fame and fancy suit is all a part of that. Those same women wouldn't probably give him a second glance if he was an inmate in an orange jumpsuit or some average joe, cutting his lawn in a t-shirt and dockers.
EnglishEdward
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For subterfuge such as election rigging to succeed it typically requires deception.
If too many people know about the deception, the subterfuge fails.
Where electoral rigging superficially works is where the tyrant controls
the electoral process via owning all the officials doing the counting or
the judges or by being able to intimidate them via the secret police etc
The United States is not yet in that position.
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