Biden is inaugurated - congratulations, America!

[Themis]

You know I've been quite depressed about the presidential and specifically the senatorial election in Georgia. But as all powerful and evil as this unholy trinity of Big Government, Wall Street (the 1%), and welfare collecting voters is, they still needed voter fraud to win this election.

So what do you think should happen to all those republicans who disagreed with Trump about voter fraud? Like the one who worked for Trump in charge of cyber security of the election. Or the one in charge of the justice department and said he looked into election fraud and found nothing that would have altered the outcome. Or all those republicans at the state levels in these battle ground states who said trump was wrong about there being voter fraud. Should we put them in jail for disagreeing with Trump, the guy who is part of that 1%?

[canpakes]

... Trump, the guy who is part of that 1%?

Seeing as that Trump was briefly President, and has had taxpayers cover about a billion dollars of his own business losses, we can also include him in the ‘big government’ and ‘welfare collecting voter’ classes, too.

Trump is, in fact, the biggest welfare queen that ajax will ever see.

[ajax18]

dp

[MeDotOrg]

You know I've been quite depressed about the presidential and specifically the senatorial election in Georgia. But as all powerful and evil as this unholy trinity of Big Government, Wall Street (the 1%), and welfare collecting voters is, they still needed voter fraud to win this election.

I can relate to your depression. I remember going to work the day after Trump was elected, sitting on the train in a state of shock. What to me was an obvious choice was not obvious to the rest of the country, or at least enough of the rest of the country to carry the electoral college.

Clinton won the popular vote. It was the second time in the last 20 years that a candidate has won the popular vote and lost the election. There is an argument to be made that the electoral college distorts the will of the people. I could have focused on that and said that Hillary Clinton was the true President. But those weren't the rules in effect. There were hard truths to be learned that had nothing to do with the electoral college. Clinton's "basket of deplorables" statement could have been the shorthand for how the Democratic party treated the concerns of "white trash". In GOP circles "basket of deplorables" became a rallying cry like Nevertheless, she persisted for the Democrats.

In 2016 People responded in part to 'tell it like it is' Trump partially in response to 8 years of "noDramaObama". And after 8 years of Obama, people perceived the coolness of Clinton as being emblematic her isolation from the suffering of white Americans. Elections are not just about ideas, they are about the context of their time.

When you look at the defeat of Trump, where only 4 years ago he had a 300+ electoral vote victory, I can see a Trump supporter thinking that fraud must be the culprit. But if you dig a little deeper, there are a lot of legitimate reasons other than fraud for what happened. Res Ipsa and others have more than adquately explained why the court challenges failed, but I wanted to offer some historical context.

Trump's approval rating never went above 49%. George H.W. Bush, another one-term President, had an 89% approval rating after the Gulf War, yet lost an election 2 years later. The U.S. was in a mild recession. I don't remember people claiming that Bill Clinton stole the election.

George Bush was a World War II flying hero, Congressman, Chairman of the RNC, Ambassador to the United Nations, Director of the C.I.A., and a two-term Vice President. He was arguably one of the most qualified Presidents in our history. The diplomatic and military team he assembled for the 1990 Gulf War sucessfully demonstrated to the world that the United States was the world's only remaining superpower. And yet he lost in 1992.

The country was in far better shape in 1992 than 2020. While it is fair to say that COVID-19 had decimated the economy, it is also fair to say the the lack of coordinated response at the national level has resulted in tens of thousands of Americans needlessly dying. It was Trump's wish to have the country recover from Covid before it was capable of recovering, because he wanted a strong economy for his re-election.

John McCain couldn't shake the stench of the housing crisis and crashed economy in 2008, even though none of it happened on his watch. Everything happened on Trump's watch. A Trump victory would have been like Herbert Hoover winning in 1932.

Donald Trump was elected in 2016 through an confluence of events creating a perfect storm. It was an unlikely victory, and since Jaunary 2016 we've beem watching the tenuous coalition try to stay together. Watching Trump triangulate his policy and positions during his Presidency, you see that he was caught on the horns of a dilema: If he appealed to his base, he alienated those who are not his base. He never found a path where he could hold on to his base and expand his popularity, ergo his popularity never rose above 49%.

In the past 36 days, 100,000 Americans have died from Covid-19. I'm pretty sure that is deadlier than the deadliest 36 days of any war in American history. So while from your perspective the election may have seemed stolen, from my perspective the election is very much in the norm of Presidential elections throughout our history: you break it, you bought it.

After Romney lost in 2012, there was a movement within the Party to reach out to minority groups. The GOP reachout to minorities means has evolved into attempting to disenfranchise voters of color in large urban areas of swing states.

Is the GOP going to be defined by Donald Trump's insistence that the election was stolen? Mitch McConnell, who stood passively by while the suggestion of a stolen election was allowed to fester, has come around to the idea that you can't define the party on a falsehood. To tie the future of the GOP to Trump is to tie the future of the party to a sinking boat. And that's before SDNY, City of New York, State of New York, et al, start combing through his tax records, financial dealings, and his co-conspirator status in the Michael Cohen case. Stoking anger about the election results was a good fund-raising tactic in the short term, but in the long term it is poison for the party.

At the beginning of Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War, narrator David McCullough says "Between 1861 and 1865, Americans made war on each other, and killed each other in great numbers, if only to become the kind of country that could no longer conceive how that was possible."

After January 6th, I'm not as sure. It still depends on how much we follow the better angels of our nature.

[Jersey Girl]

... Trump, the guy who is part of that 1%?

Seeing as that Trump was briefly President, and has had taxpayers cover about a billion dollars of his own business losses, we can also include him in the ‘big government’ and ‘welfare collecting voter’ classes, too.

Trump is, in fact, the biggest welfare queen that ajax will ever see.

You know what I was thinking about while out driving earlier? How many years of his life and how much time has the man spent in litigation? I'll bet it's been more hours devoted to that than whatever job he has had.

I mean, T-man.

[Gadianton]

Ben Shapiro seems to be certain there is no significant evidence of voter fraud.

Assuming this means that you also do not believe the election was stolen, would it be fair to say you were salivating over the possibility that Trump could reverse the election based on a blatant lie? Here's a a significant problem you have, Ajax: we all justify ends by means to a certain degree, but you're completely immersed in this idea that a democrat as president is so bad, that it must be reversed in Trump's favor by any means necessary. You're essentially willing to throw the constitution out the window and give Trump absolute power as a dictator and role the dice that he won't screw you personally.

As you've seen, from Bill Bar, to Mike Pence, to the capitol rioters, a lot of people get screwed by Trump when he don't get his way.

[ajax18]

Assuming this means that you also do not believe the election was stolen,

Just because you can't track down a thief and prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury that the fuzzy low budget camera video image was in fact him doesn't mean he didn't rob the store.

would it be fair to say you were salivating over the possibility that Trump could reverse the election based on a blatant lie?

I was salivating at the possibilities for working class Americans like those working on the Keystone pipeline.

Here's a a significant problem you have, Ajax: we all justify ends by means to a certain degree, but you're completely immersed in this idea that a democrat as president is so bad, that it must be reversed in Trump's favor by any means necessary.

No this is what the establishment believed about an economic nationalist and populist candidate like Trump. That's why they want to impeach a private citizen. They're scared of him. Most rich people don't stand up for working class Americans like Trump did. They just take advantage of their labor and use their tax dollars to cement their economic control over them. But what if another politician taps into the idea of economic nationalism and America first?

You're essentially willing to throw the constitution out the window and give Trump absolute power as a dictator and role the dice that he won't screw you personally.

As you've seen, from Bill Bar, to Mike Pence, to the capitol rioters, a lot of people get screwed by Trump when he don't get his way.

Why didn't Pence invoke the 25th amendment on Trump if Trump supposedly screwed him over? Trump as dictator would be better for me as an individual than what this socialist majority wants for me any day of the week. And not just me but every native born working class American. And it's not just a few. It's all 75 million of us, the tax chattel that the elites must not allow to escape from under their lordship, the wage workers, whose wages must never rise. It's not Trump the establishment fears. It's the people he loves and those that love him.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Basic civics lessons for our magats:

https://www.polytechpanthers.com/m/page ... _ID=418932

Links are at the bottom. Ppt presentations. And a nice old lady made them.

- Doc

[Chap]

it's the people [Trump] loves and those that love him.

Trump loves nobody but Trump. You really haven't noticed that?

[Jersey Girl]

t's the people [Trump] loves and those that love him.

Trump loves nobody but Trump. You really haven't noticed that?

"Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy," he said. "And after this, we're going to walk down — and I'll be there with you — we're going to walk down ... to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women." DJT January 6, 2021

I guess he meant in spirit.