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Monday, March 14, 2016

No, it's Still Fun Being a Trump Democrat

I couldn't disagree more with this:

"Against Liberal Schadenfreude"

"It was once easy to root for Trump to blow up the GOP. Not anymore."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/03/against_liberal_schadenfreude_democrats_shouldn_t_be_gleeful_that_the_gop.html

Uh, maybe Issac Chotiner can speak for himself. I have been a 'Trump Democrat' since late July and have remained one every since.

I think that if your a liberal you have to want Trump for Hillary's primary opponent. Elspeth Reeve is exactly right that Trump is Hillary's dream opponent.

https://newrepublic.com/article/131336/donald-trump-hillary-clintons-dream-opponent

As Reeve says, gender is a big part of why Trump will be the dream opponent.

Brendan Nylan is another one pushing the panic button.

"We may narrowly avert disaster per below but even if we do, no one should congratulate themselves on a great victory"

https://storify.com/DemFromCT/brendan-nyhan-on-the-mutifactorial-institutional-f

So he thinks that if for instance we had a President Ted Cruz or John Kaisch we would have avoided disaster? His view is very mistaken.

"One reason: much of the "this will end soon..." rationalizing (which I once shared) has now shifted to general. No one should be comforted."

Now, see, this is one reason I am much less apoplectic than him. I have argued since the Summer:

1. Trump has a very good shot at being the GOP nominee. Admittedly I never predicted he'd win for sure but I always saw it as a real possibility and thought Nate Silver and Harry Enten were ludicrous in their claims that he will lose Iowa and lose everywhere else over night.

I always knew he had a real shot at the nomination and figured even if he didn't win it, he'd be around for the long term and could screw things up for the GOP anyway. Hence my liberal schadenfreude.

2. But while Nyhan was dead wrong that the GOP was too healthy a party to stop him he is also dead wrong that Trump has a great chance at winning this in the general.

3. Ok, his chance of winning isn't zero. But then the chance of anything isn't zero. The oddsmakers seem to have HRC as a 3 to 1 favorite to beat Trump.

https://electionbettingodds.com/week.html

Those odds are much bigger than if she was against a generic Republican-Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, one of the Establishment clowns. Nyhan wrongly seems to think aren't scary at all.

Back to Issac Chotiner:

"Try to imagine a Trump presidency the day after a major, 9/11-like terrorist attack. There is simply no telling what the man would or could do. He has already threatened to go after his enemies if elected, promising a sort of Nixon-but-worse approach to governance. In the event of terrorism, how far would he go to curb civil liberties? What insane foreign policy idea would he dream up and pursue? Sure, George W. Bush curtailed civil liberties and invaded Iraq. But that’s the point. Trump is a more hateful person than Bush and threatens to be even less bound by democratic checks and balances than Bush was."

Are you kidding me? How does Chotiner knows that W was less hateful? Would he say that of Cheney as well?

"Even without an attack, Trump could move the United States closer to what Fareed Zakaria has called an “illiberal democracy,” a country with regular elections but little regard for the people or the institutions of state, which the leadership can ignore at will. (The current list of countries with illiberal elected leaders stretches from Russia to Turkey to India.) Recent American history has not featured a candidate who, if victorious, could fundamentally alter the country’s character in such a way."

Brian Beutler has the right answer to this:

"Bush wasn't unbound by democratic checks in a vacuum. He benefitted from a deeply complicit Congress and (to a lesser extent) judiciary."

https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/708737688375939072

"ALL non-Trump candidates, if elected, would be given the same latitude, and Rubio in particular would be inclined toward the same excesses."

https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/708738371686780928

Thank you. This has been my argument all along. Rubio would be a nightmare. He'd be like George W. Bush, only 10 times more opposed to a woman's right to choose.

"Under Trump, by contrast, Congress would reassert itself as it hasn't in over 30 years–assuming he pursued his agenda as we think he would."

https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/708739137138925569

This is in many ways what would happen to Bernie too. He also has few allies in the Democratic party-as Trump has few in the GOP.

Beutler is just dead on here:

The real danger isn't electing a demagogue who has powerful enemies. It's in electing a pliant party-man who has none."

https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/708739910866313216

Chotiner then goes on to say something even more absurd. It's such bad advice he shouldn't be advising liberals.

"Some schadenfreude-soaked liberals will argue that Trump could never get elected. Maybe so, though the Republican establishment was not long ago just as smug in such a conclusion. But even if Trump doesn’t win the presidency, it’s not clear that a shattered Republican Party is good for liberalism, or the country, however satisfying it might be. In the short term, Hillary Clinton is likely to benefit. But there is no guarantee that whatever emerges from the rubble of Republican collapse will be any better, or any less hateful, than what came before it. Two-party systems require two healthy parties. Rot would increasingly infect the Democratic Party if it had no real opposition."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/03/against_liberal_schadenfreude_democrats_shouldn_t_be_gleeful_that_the_gop.html

I've argued for the last year that the Democrats need to win not an endless parity. For 48 years going back to 1968, the Dems and GOP have played to a draw. But since the goal of conservatives has been to bring government to a standstill parity means the Dems can get nothing done.

We want a victorious Democratic party. That will be able to defend, consolidate, and build on Obama's achievements.

A splintered GOP will no longer be able to stop the Democrats. That's the endgame we should want.

The very idea that liberals should fight for protecting the GOP from itself is absurd. A tie means we lose and we've been tying for 48 years. I say tie as government has almost always been divided between the two parties since the end of the New Deal coalition. Either the GOP has the Presidency as it did in the 70s and 80s but the Dems have Congress. 

Starting with Bill Clinton, the Dems figured out how to win the White House again. But then the GOP took over Congress.

My reason for being a Trump Democrat was my early realization that Trump is going to end up being the best thing ever for Democrats. Anyone who can't see this is fairly hopeless.

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