I’m kind of loving the “I’m a very stable genius” thing. It’s the 2010’s version of “I am not a crook.” The fact that you have to say it is the main problem. The fact that you aren’t believed is the knockout.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
So Trump thinks he’s a stable genius? Pardon me while I barf/fall down laughing/hurl myself out the dining room window.
I downloaded the Wolff book. I’m assuming some of it is hyperbole and some is conjecture, but I’m also believing that there’s truth in it. I’m just a few chapters into it at this point, but it’s pretty scary already and I’m sure by the end, I’ll be ready for a bomb shelter and survival gear.
Trump is a disaster on so many levels. We should all be terrified at his ineptitude, his lack of leadership skills, his braindead governing…just name it and he’s the worst. We truly have a spoiled child as our president and we have to do everything we can to get rid of him.
“terrified at his ineptitude, his lack…[etc]”
Sure, but this was all abundantly clear when Der Trumper announced his preposterous candidacy. What is truly terrifying is that this was utterly meaningless to the incompetent white electorate. That and the fact that they can never be relied upon for minimal electoral competence ever again…
Trumper is merely a symptom.
I haven’t read the book, just the New York magazine story.
I’m intrigued by the timing of this. Pass a unpopular tax bill. Install a host of right wing federal judges. Put moles in place in federal agencies.
Trump’s usefulness may now be less then his electoral negatives for the Republican party. They are preparing to cut him loose.
In some ways this explains how closely they are embracing him currently, confirming their party loyalty today, knowing that 2018 will be a blue wave(particularly senators who are not up for election this cycle).Some “revelation” will be uncovered by the next congress, Trump is thrown overboard, let the rebranding begin !(See “Tea Party” after GWB)
The focus on Trump the individual ignores the most important point: Their policies are his, his policies are theirs. It’s their approach to how we organize as a society that I want to have discussed ad infinitum.
We are a shell of a 1st world country, Over the last 37 years we’ve done minimal investing in our future. There is no painless,quick fix, but an important 1st step will be making policy discussions more important then personality.
Yes:
wrt: They are preparing to cut him loose.
They’re neither smart nor prescient enough to have gamed it out. What they’re doing is waiting for the polls to tell them which way to move. In part because they’re spooked about all the times so many declared that it was was curtains for Trump and he didn’t collapse and some times became politically stronger after such pronouncements. Trump has appropriated the GOP racist/crazy/fundie base. The first two strongly identify with him and once the fundie base shifted to him, they became committed believers because belief is what guides them. The GOP can’t win without them and so far, can’t hold onto them without Trump.
Good summary of the current tactical situation.
“The GOP can’t win without them and so far, can’t hold onto them without Trump.”
Feeding this base exclusively, which is what Trump and the GOP have been doing to a large extent, also has the effect of turning off other voters they need to win at the national level. Trumpism is a double-edged sword. The things they need to do to keep the base narrows their support and turns off everyone else. Expanding their support means doing things that turns off the base.
The ONLY way they can win nationally is if the democrats and the opposition fails to get the vote out. If they do, Trump and the GOP will see, as one of their fellow travelers, Winston Churchill famously said, “the end of the beginning.” Of course if, Mueller doesn’t beat them to it.
“The ONLY way they can win nationally is if the democrats and the opposition fails to get the vote out. “
They don’t need to win nationally to win.
What does “fails to get the vote out” mean? There were 4.7 million more votes counted in ’16 than in ’08. Obama ’12 and Clinton ’16 got nearly the same number of votes. Trump received over two million more votes than Romney did, but Trump shed a significant number (at least two million) of Romney voters to Johnson and Mullin; so, there were more like four million Trump voters that hadn’t voted in ’12. Was the ’16 GOP GOTV effort bigger, stronger, better than it had been in ’12? That’s not a claim that anyone seems to have made.
I’d like to agree with this.
But I’ve realized that the election of such an officer is always about personality. Policies seem to come and go. We did discuss personalities – why was this election so crazy? Why did the Republican party allow this walk-on to take it over, and why did so many people vote for this obvious con man?
We should be having a major constitutional re-write discussion too. The 21st century is a lot different than the 18th.
I’m sure you must realize that to bring the US Constitution into the 21st century without 2/3rds of the states having Democratic legislatures and governors means that the Constitution will not only stay in the 18th century but would probably be turned into a one-party dictatorship instead with no rights except the right to bear arms. That’s why we need to take back more state governments lest it be too late.
o/t but then is anything o/t with Trump?
Wondering if Wolff was or became an FBI informant while inside the WH???
The book is just great so far (I’m a few chapters in) — reminiscent of The Final Days and also, more importantly, of the first volume of Ian Kershaw’s Hitler biography, in the portions that center around 1938 and the sudden, unexpected legitimization of the “clownish” fringe politician and his sketchy gang of syncophants/hangers on — who, in Kershaw’s expertly collated diary entries, letters etc. express similar astonishment at achieving power and weirdly-combined contempt and reverence for the central figure.
1933, not 1938. I always forget how fucking long the Third Reich lasted…the soul-numbing duration is what made it especially horrible.
Imagine not having that built-in four-year mechanism! It’s the stuff of nightmares.
Going out on a limb here, but: Trumper will never top this line. It now explodes into popular culture.
More proof that satire is dead.
It does seem he is in a meltdown- a very stable genius, no less.
He always appears to be in a meltdown when hit hard. Charlottesville was the hardest and was sustained for the longest period. However, as with the prior attacks that hit a nerve, the opposition and media eased up after a few days.
Wolff is hitting multiple nerves in quick succession and appears to ready for a sustained battle. He’ll need a store of reserve ammo or the media will get bored and move on after his fireworks display and Trump’s flailing responses.
Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t (but it did buy him another eight months).