ZMan has a look in on all this Trump/DeSantis nonsense.
Ron Versus Don
The basic argument from the DeSantis partisans is that he has a chance to win the general election, while Trump has no chance. More important, DeSantis knows how to govern, which he has proven in Florida. There is no doubt that he has been a great governor for Florida. He also has a very friendly state legislature, which makes it simple for him to get things done. There is no data to suggest he has a better shot against Biden than Trump, but that is the claim.The truth is electability has never been a factor in these races. Most voters are not like most Republican politicians in that they do not negotiate with themselves. They vote for the candidate they like, not the candidate that a conservative commentator swears will be acceptable to the Democrats. Even if their preferred option has no chance in the general, most voters will go for the guy who speaks to them. It turns out that most people are decent and honest, not scheming weasels.
That is the argument for Trump. Despite his faults, and he has many, he represents those decent and honest people. He is a symbol, more than a candidate. Supporting Trump is about opposing the people who rule over us. It is as close as we get in America to class warfare. Trump’s voters are the great unwashed, the forgotten Americans who hate what has happened to their country. Trump is not the solution, but he makes noise on their behalf. That is enough.
Both camps are right in the same way that two people who have different favorite ice creams are right, even though they disagree. There is no empirical argument in favor of either guy as it is purely a matter of opinion. Pedro Gonzales is mad at Trump for not being the savior he hoped for in 2016, so he is has jumped on the DeSantis side, while Scott Greer still loves Trump and now hates DeSantis. Their arguments in favor of their guy are cognitively meaningless.
That said, we can assess the electability claim. The place to start is the 2020 election broken out by electoral votes. All of those national polls that people wave around are meaningless as we pick presidents by indirect election. In the last election, Biden won 303 electoral votes, while Trump got 235. The threshold to win is 270. There were a lot of shenanigans in the 2020 election, but they were repeated in 2022, so we have to treat them as a feature, rather than a bug.
He goes on to do some juggling with the state-by-state math of the thing, and the sum of the equation is necessarily neither pretty nor reassuring.
What this tells us is the odds for a Republican win are awfully long. They have to win states that are mostly in the other camp by default. Then they have to defend their own states, some of which are trending the wrong way. The Yankee invasion of North Carolina is turning the state into Virginia. Texas is slowly becoming California as those weirdos arrive in droves. Barring some sort of black swan event, Joe Biden will cruise to victory in 2024 no matter his opponent.
What this says is that the choice for Republicans is not centered on electability, but who they prefer to see lose in 2024. The neocons and conservatives prefer to see Trump lose, but they are so full of hatred of white people now, they will root against him in the primary, even if it works against their interests. The DeSantis fans are coming around to the same view, thinking that Trump is some sort of bad juju that must be exorcised in order to return to the 1980’s.
For dissidents, it is a different question. DeSantis is a good governor and it would be better if he finished the job and set an example for others. We do not need another too nice to win loser presidential candidate. Trump is a crazy man who sends the bad guys into paroxysms of vengeful hysteria. He was a lousy president, but he has proven to be a great wrecking ball. His revenge tour, especially if he is indicted, will be the mother of all crap shows. A good time will be had by all.
I’m with him on that. Read on to the very end; Z’s conclusion—“there is no path forward in the current system”—is dead accurate, as well as damned unsettling. I wish there was a credible counterargument to be made, but honestly, there isn’t. No honest, genuine candidate intent on real reform will ever again be “elected” President. Should one somehow manage an end-run against the rigged process and prevail, against all odds, he will be thwarted by the Shadow State apparat entire right from Day One. If you want Unity, well, you’ll certainly see some then—all you ever wanted to see of it, and then some.
Update! Bill is slightly more optimistic—at least, this is what passes for optimism in these dark, parlous days.
I think this is probably right, at least for America right now. But I don’t think the current situation will maintain for that much longer. There are too many systemic, technological, and generational forces at work reshaping our nation, and it is by no means certain that the nation as presently constituted will survive them, especially since they will be coming to a head over the next six years or so.
Which means that we may have only one more “normal” election cycle before all hell breaks loose. So don’t place any long-term bets on what that red and blue map says today. It may not even exist for the 2026 and 2028 elections. And although we can’t see them clearly (yet), I have to assume there is a whole flock of black swans flapping around out there, looking for places to come home to roost.
Yep. In times like this, the one and only thing we can know for sure is that we won’t know for sure until we find ourselves right smack in the middle of it. Not a particularly cheering thought, but it’s the best we’re going to get. As all the cool kids like to say nowadays, it is what it is.
If that isn’t what the cool kids say, please don’t tell me, aiight? Ahem.
6
- Entries
wpDiscuz
We keep starting with a False Premise.
Trump didn’t win 235 EC Votes. He won 314 EC Votes. Biden got to 270 by “winning” three states by less than 43,000 total over the three. States which had anomalies in voting in the hundreds of thousands EACH just in the 3am Election Night counts.
RDS will no more be allowed to claim his actual EC Votes as Trump was if he is truly MAGA. If he is NOT truly MAGA then what difference does it make? He will just be like HW and W Bush and take the Country leftward albeit slower.
Oh, and North Carolina is NOT trending Blue. The Governor lost in 2020 and cheated to win. They were thinking of cheating the State away from Trump too. In 2022 the Legislature has a large Republican Majority.
Cheating in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle and Charlotte kept a supermajority from the GOP legislature and the Governor office. This allows them to Rule by Fiat. A Dictatorship.
Trump probably ALSO won VA and MN as well in 2020.
We are NEVER getting to 270 again unless the Vote Fraud is stopped in about 9 States.
In North Carolina all one need do is look at the vote totals for Cooper and the rest of the cast. For commie cooper to win meant that many people that supported every other republican voted for cooper. This has never happened and didn’t happen in 2020. Commie cooper was installed in the governors mansion. Who is commie coopers #1 supporter? A CCP tied chinese national. This is easy.
The national election is easy as well. Any credible statistician can do the math and tell you the truth. Lets start with two basic facts: Trump won in 18 of 19 of the real bellwether counties. That little fact has never ever failed to choose the presidential winner. Second, Trump was up in 6 states and the lead was increasing when they shut down the vote counting, then resumed in the early morning in secret. You only do that if you are cheating. They thought they had it rigged enough, then discovered it was a landslide never seen before for Trump, so that forced them to shut it all down.
That’s it. That’s all you need to know. If those two indisputable facts don’t do it for you, and your honest, then you’re not very bright.
And who paid for this?
Soros and Zuckerberg.
And Griffin and Pelosi and Biden and Gates and Buffett.
Yes, but to a significantly less extent.
Griffin, Gates, Buffett have 20x the clout Soros has these days.
I doubt Zuckerberg really runs the algorithms of his firm. I think the whole thing, like Sam Bankman-Fried, is a Front for the Intelligence Agencies and the whiz kids they recruit. Zuckerberg is a smarter, younger, more presentable face than Biteme for the ops.
Sam Bankman-Fried was a front for his parents and such a loser they figured that was the only way to get him a job that paid. Turns out he was even stupider than they imagined and his “girlfriend” the amphetamines freak.
“I think the whole thing, like Sam Bankman-Fried, is a Front for the Intelligence Agencies and the whiz kids they recruit.”
Absolutely so. Kinda like having a front man for president. If they’ll put a potato as the supposed head, imagine what else they will do.
Did Soros and Zuckerberg pay? Of course.
Are they the prime movers at this level. No, they are role players. It’s the big money backed by the enemies of America. Many of them are in the republican party. McConnell for starters. Fox news has Paul Ryan working there, he’s another one. Rupert Murdoch is one standing with the rest of CCP owned Wall St.
I would not call Zuckerberg’s $400 million in the 2020 election small potatoes.
Mark, billions are being spent.
$400m isn’t small potatoes, but it was our money funneled through Fuckerberg who is just a front man.
His, and the other social media, contributions were in the form of being gatekeeper to suppress real stories and spread Propaganda and FUD in its place. That’s where the whiz kids come in. Writing the algorithms that quickly identify real stories detrimental to the Narrative and having the author’s banned or the stories shadow banned by putting them into search result #1,312,666. Do it quick enough and no one ever sees it. Build up a database of “problematic” authors then prevents them from writing any more. Finally, quickly concoct and distribute alternate Narratives or selectively edited stories to replace them and Push the Narrative.
They gave BILLIONS to the Uniparty in that way.
Meanwhile Gates funnels billions into what eventually became the Scamdemic and the ScamClimateChange and the FUD
ANd if you think the FBI and IA agencies were ONLY using Twitter to censor the news and create the narratives then you’re hopelessly naive..
What amazes me is that those two point alone SHOULD be sufficient. However, for those other skeptics we have hundreds of other data points to show how they Cheated.
I think most people with an IQ over 85 know Trump Won. Those who know but deny it just liked the Result.
Absolutely. There is a ton of hard evidence. But those two points separate the gullible idiots, liars, and fools from honest and normal Americans.
It really is that simple.
Here you go, for those that are mentally challenged, perhaps reading this will help you understand the truth, that elections are being stolen and manipulated nationwide:
Just one of hundreds of voting system manipulation facts.