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What, we're not going to get the concentration camps? But I am assured that there will be concentration camps!
I honestly don't understand why the strategy has been to build Trump up as this massive threat with power, influence, and a horde of fanatically devoted followers who will vote for him no matter what. Wouldn't it have been better to insist that he was a has-been, washed-up, useless and incapable? Couldn't do anything while in power, so why vote for him again? Instead, everyone is leaping up on chairs drawing their skirts about their knees shrieking that he's going to be Literally Hitler when he gets back into power in 2024.
During Trump's first election campaign he was artificially boosted by media companies on the order of the Clinton campaign, because they believed that his extreme politics would make people run away from the Republican party. I don't see any reason to believe that they will have changed their approach or learned from their mistakes in 2016.
And see how that backfired on Hillary and her campaign. If the Democratic Party is the party of the reality community and smart people and the educated and the rest of the virtuous things they are never tired telling us about, then surely they should be able to learn from "well that didn't work at all last time"?
‘If’
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Partisanship is at very high levels historically, convincing people not to vote for their party's candidate is a losing battle (and correctly so, the most consequential thing Trump did was appoint Supreme Court justices and that was an astronomically huge win for his base even though literally anyone in his chair with a R by their name would have done the same thing).
The way you win is by driving up turnout for your own base. Which is what the scare tactics are for.
Yeah, but the scare tactics also energise the opposition base. If potential voters are seeing "Out of all our possible nominees, Trump is the one that scares the other bunch and they're afraid he's going to do all the policies when he gets into power", then if I am broadly in tune with what Trump is saying, or at the very least I feel that I'm not going to do well if Gavin Newsom becomes president, I'm going to go for Trump instead of Nikki or Vivek or whatever other 'let's pick a nice moderate centrist to cool down partisanship' person is put up.
If you really think Trump is going to End Democracy, then do the tar baby strategy (side note: is that acceptable reference or not, I have no idea what particular bee may be in any Anti-Evil bonnet about outdated references): go "Trump is all washed-up and useless, who we really don't want to see getting the nod is [Billy-Bob]". That throws support behind Billy-Bob and with any luck splits the opposition vote on polling day. At the very least, Billy-Bob should be the lesser of two evils.
Again, I agree this is a sensible type of strategy in general, I just think Trump has had too much of a lead for it to actually change the outcome of the Republican primary.
And if you try it and fail then you've potentially hurt your chances in the General by not activating your own base.
It's a strategic calculation with trade-offs. I think the strategic choice their making has better chances than the one you're proposing, but of course I could be wrong.
If your base has to be activated by a belief that this time for realsies the sky is falling, then you should instead invest in a bunch of cattle-prods to drive them to the voting booth. Cheaper and less wearing on the nerves for the rest of us who have to listen to the hyperventilating.
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Agree and disagree. I don’t think the right needed huge turnout for Desantis to win. Enough median voters would be turned off by Biden and be fine with Desantis as more of an institutionalist GOP who also bashes a bunch of the left but I don’t think the average voter super cares about trans rights and many are fine with just interpreting them as mentally ill males. But those voters would turn up to vote against Trump.
Trump campaign big turning point was all the charges; before that Desantis was making ground. The charges did two things - 1. Got trump in the news cycle after he was in blackout and 2. Trigger a protect your flank movement with conservatives like myself who rightfully know you can’t abandon a third of your vote.
In the end the left locked in the nomination for Trump who for many seems more unstable than Desantis.
I can see the sense in that narrative, but I don't think it quite lines up with the reality of the modern Republican party.
Trump's popularity among Republicans has been hovering steadily in the 75%-85% range for years, Desantis never got above 65%.
Maybe Democrats could have socially engineered Republican's loyalties by continuing to ignore Trump and acting really scared of Desnatis, but that's giving them a lot of credit to be able to control their opponent's actions. I doubt it would have worked.
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