Post by the Scribe on Jan 20, 2024 1:57:27 GMT
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Welcome to Standing Room Only, the biweekly politics newsletter for Salon readers who like to be plugged in and a little bit rowdy. I’m your host, Amanda Marcotte. Grab a beverage and let’s review what’s rocking in politics right now.
Trump loves watching his followers die for him
One of the surest signs that Donald Trump is a cult leader is that he enjoys testing how much his adherents will sacrifice for Dear Leader. On Sunday, Trump told his followers that avoiding death is no reason to skip the Iowa caucuses: “You can't sit home. If you're sick as a dog, you say: 'God I gotta make it.' Even if you vote and then pass away, it's worth it.”
None of this was necessary, since Trump won Iowa by huge margins. He’s just a narcissist who thinks he’s a god. He gets a kick out of people who give up everything out of foolish loyalty to him, loyalty he’ll never return. He barely conceals how he’s pleased about Capitol insurrectionists doing time for him or the people who died of covid because he claimed it's a “hoax.”
Are some Republican voters hoping Trump goes away on his own?
Donald Trump’s win of the Iowa caucuses was so overdetermined that it felt silly even bothering with the horse race-style poll parsing afterwards. (I wrote about how it’s an illustration of how evangelicals worship Trump, not Christ.) But after the first round of “Trump blowout” headlines from Monday night, a more intriguing analysis by people willing to look more closely at the polls started to emerge: Trump underperformed expectations.
Tempting to scoff, when he won by higher margins than any other Republican in a contested Iowa primary, but Heather “Digby” Parton laid out the argument Wednesday: “For a campaign that's supposed to be Trump's thrilling return from exile, it doesn't appear to have particularly motivated the faithful.”
This is a two-point argument: First, the turnout was surprisingly low, down nearly half from what it was in 2016. This runs counter to both Trump’s messianic posturing and the claims he activates otherwise checked-out voters. Second, he really should have had an incumbent’s showing, with his name recognition, but he barely cleared 50%. Beyond Digby, Dan Pfeiffer of Message Box and Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo are making the same point.
As Digby notes, only 7% of registered Republicans turned out for Trump, which is not the numbers one would expect if he’s the rock star he claims. One intriguing possibility is that a silent-but-significant number of Republicans are running out of steam. It must be exhausting, constantly trying to rationalize behavior that is utterly indefensible.
Republican voters must know history will regard Trump as a villain. I wonder how many are quietly hoping he’ll just disappear so they don’t feel like they have to spend any more years with their hackles constantly raised, defending a man they know, deep down, is a clown and a fascist.
Trump bets big that male voters love a proud sex offender
Donald Trump is in court again, dealing with a new defamation lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, a journalist he sexually assaulted in the 90s. As the judge noted with regards to the last case, concluded in May, “The fact that Mr. Trump sexually abused — indeed, raped — Ms. Carroll has been conclusively established.”
Due to some legal technicalities, many in the press are cautious with the R-word to describe what a jury found Trump liable for the first time. But Sen. Mitt Romney was blunt enough, telling CNN, “ You had a jury that said that Donald Trump raped a woman,” and lamenting that “a lot of people in this country are out of touch with reality” if they don’t see that this is true.
I’m glad Romney is speaking out, but as a feminist who spent two decades in the Rape War trenches, I suspect the issue is less that Trump supporters don’t believe Carroll, and more that they don’t care. These are the same folks who think women should be forced to give birth. They backed Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin. They fought tooth and nail to prevent universities from complying with Title IX rules requiring schools to discipline students guilty of sexual abuse. They rallied around Brett Kavanaugh.
Rep. Matt Gaetz recently argued the GOP doesn’t need to persuade female voters, because, “For every Karen we lose, there’s a Julio and a Jamaal ready to sign up for the MAGA movement.”
Beyond just the pleasure he gets torturing Carroll, I think this is why Trump is acting every inch the sex offender in the recent trial. Men like Gaetz and Trump clearly believe there’s a silent majority of men who share the view that the real outrage is not men who abuse, but a legal system that would hold them accountable for it. And maybe there is — Trump always wins the majority of male voters, after all. But I don’t know that it’s a strong enough majority to drown out the number of women who are getting rightfully sick of all the misogyny.
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What we're reading this week
“What Nikki Haley — and I — Learned at a Segregation Academy,” Elizabeth Spiers, New York Times
post.spmailtechnol.com/f/a/bq9a5ZFp-oMysG_zRunhhw~~/AASU4wA~/RgRnjOlPP0REaHR0cHM6Ly9hLnBvc3QubGhkLmxpbmsvbzVjY3V3ZHIwei8_bGhfYWlkPTM1ODI5NDUmbGhfY2lkPTBlMm9jeWs0ODFXA3NwY0IKZaJXZKplAxXHO1IScm9idGVtcGVAeWFob28uY29tWAQAAAAm
“Fox News Isn’t a Kingmaker,” Paul Farhi, Atlantic
post.spmailtechnol.com/f/a/LJAi-9R36kLKZndZumPGXw~~/AASU4wA~/RgRnjOlPP0REaHR0cHM6Ly9hLnBvc3QubGhkLmxpbmsvOHFkMmxuOTU4Ny8_bGhfYWlkPTM1ODI5NDUmbGhfY2lkPTBlMm9jeWs0ODFXA3NwY0IKZaJXZKplAxXHO1IScm9idGVtcGVAeWFob28uY29tWAQAAAAm
“Elise Stefanik’s Ugly ‘Hostages’ Barb Points to Serious GOP Mayhem Ahead,” Greg Sargent, New Republic
post.spmailtechnol.com/f/a/sssGi6oekq1uny-Oi80E5Q~~/AASU4wA~/RgRnjOlPP0REaHR0cHM6Ly9hLnBvc3QubGhkLmxpbmsvZXRhcXJmaTdtcS8_bGhfYWlkPTM1ODI5NDUmbGhfY2lkPTBlMm9jeWs0ODFXA3NwY0IKZaJXZKplAxXHO1IScm9idGVtcGVAeWFob28uY29tWAQAAAAm
“Trump’s behavior at his civil trials tells us what he is up to,” Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post
post.spmailtechnol.com/f/a/RbyOrB-TcwcMWKThZWUMHA~~/AASU4wA~/RgRnjOlPP0REaHR0cHM6Ly9hLnBvc3QubGhkLmxpbmsvdWFoYTB6OWRpaS8_bGhfYWlkPTM1ODI5NDUmbGhfY2lkPTBlMm9jeWs0ODFXA3NwY0IKZaJXZKplAxXHO1IScm9idGVtcGVAeWFob28uY29tWAQAAAAm
“This Woman’s Work” by Kate Bush
Kate Bush - This Woman's Work - Official Music Video
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