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Notes -
In general I would agree that I would not expect much from a second Trump term. However, he would have some significant benefits this time.
The opposition left I believe will become less engaged. How do you motivate the troops if you spend 8 years calling him the Antichrist and then the American people reject that and vote him in anyway. They would be a defeated people.
He seems to be growing somewhat as a politician.
He’s going to be more popular during the second term and it seems like a lot of former Dem voters are moving to Trump voters because they now believe he’s better. I remember Chamath flipping a few months ago publicly.
The GOP has a better policy framework in the legal sense to deal with the left now. Guys like Hannania have been thinking about the legislative stuff that has provided the woke with protection. You have two types of corporations on woke stuff (1) the true believers (Disney) (2) those afraid of lawsuits and keep their mouth shut. Maybe nothing gets done but policy frameworks will exists in 2024 that did not exists in 2016. Ideas will exists to start to close the lefts institutional power. They will still dominate the institutions in terms of personel but their legal rights have a chance of being defanged.
See, I don't see how that will work
Again, I disagree. Because laws are but words — and words are wind — unless you can get them enforced. And I don't see how the right can meaningfully do that.
They may not accomplish the mission but Hannania has written a lot about how changes in the law (civil rights etc) have given the left a lot of lawsuit power on things like disparate impact. I believe Musks is being sued on something like that. If they can change the laws (a tough asks) then they can change the facts on the ground.
And if they change the laws — again, mere words on paper — and the 2 million plus just ignore and refuse to obey or enforce the new laws? The only real laws are whatever it is that men with guns choose to enforce.
Okay, but we're talking about a future GOP govt repealing these laws. I get you're a big doomer, but surely the idea of a liberal DOJ apparachnik charging a Trump appointee with a law that isn't on the books anymore and threatening the Republican judge that if he doesn't pretend like the law is still real, the two-million-strong army of Democrat-voting mailmen and receptionists will hold him accountable must sound farcical even to you.
Is a law really repealed if the people who actually enforce the laws keep enforcing it?
Perhaps a slightly uncharitable framing, but, yes, that is the sort of thing I expect in that scenario.
In that scenario, even with a deeply hostile media, the Republicans would have a field day excoriating the managers over this. The judicial system is not partisan enough to go along with this, and judges tend to deeply resent being threatened in their own courtrooms. Look at the Governor of New Mexico, who was informed by her also-Democratic Attorney General that he was simply not going to enforce her gun-grabbing executive order due to its blatant unconstitutionality for a very recent example where establishment liberals will stop each other when their actions become indefensible to the public.
“John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”
AFAIK, DC still hasn't given Dick Heller his carry permit. As others have noted here, the people targeting Masterpiece Cakeshop looked at his court win, shrugged, and just kept on without the slightest change in behavior. They already ignore unfavorable court rulings, so why not more so?
You've shown counter-examples to me of liberal lawfare where the institutional left has to regroup and find another angle of attack, but what about my example, which is much more recent than either, of showing dissent in their ranks?
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Wow, you're a lot more optimistic than I am! I anticipate that we will revert right back to everyone calling him (and actually thinking) he's the Antichrist, and the left will simply use the fact that he was reelected as proof that we're a white supremecist nation, that Trump has corrupted various institutions through dirty dealing, that Russia is still meddling in our elections, and what else.
I also forgot another reason - Musks owns twitter. It may not be the dominant information provider to most Americans but it is the dominant information provider for the top 10-20% which is key to getting outrage movements going.
Since Musks took over twitter right-wing boycotts began to succeed. Twitter in terms of power is well-worth the 40 billion paid for it.
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That stuff will exists but I don’t think it will get to peak 2019-2020.
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I think that obviously MSNBC will still say that, and I think sliders probably isn’t disputing this. But it’s entirely possible it simply has less bite this time around; I wouldn’t count on it, but it also wouldn’t be shocking if TDS generated its own fatigue and parts of the dem coalition which never found Trump qua Trump particularly deranging but were being team players about it stopped playing along with that stuff.
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