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[chuckbert]

It will certainly be interesting how some Republicans deal with this - particularly absolute hypocrites and careerists such as Ted Cruz. He can only be eyeing a run in 2024 given his backing of Trump and his baseless claims. The man obviously has no pride or principals - Trump variously called him Lyin' Ted, accused his father of being an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald, questioned his Evangelical beliefs, made 'birther' accusations and insulted his wife! And yet, there he is - fully supporting the same man!

Agreed. Cruz doesn't "believe" s**t. He just acts selfishly. He'd stab DT Jr in the back viciously as soon as it became expedient.

 

[Sheik djibouti]

It will certainly be interesting how some Republicans deal with this - particularly absolute hypocrites and careerists such as Ted Cruz. He can only be eyeing a run in 2024 given his backing of Trump and his baseless claims. The man obviously has no pride or principals - Trump variously called him Lyin' Ted, accused his father of being an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald, questioned his Evangelical beliefs, made 'birther' accusations and insulted his wife! And yet, there he is - fully supporting the same man!

Money talks, power corrupts.

 

[Marked Ox]

I am not sure that there will be a split in the party.
The US seems to be far more of a 2 party country than the UK.
I suspect that there will be infighting within the Republican Party ( especially if Trump or his son try and run in the next election)

I think Trump, as he is a bad loser who likes getting "revenge", will back those who stand against those who didn't back him over his fake election claims in their next primaries (Raffensberger, Kemp and Thune are the obvious ones). This will happen at Federal, State, County level which will marginalise moderates. Trump has the war chest with his money raising for his PAC and he has sufficient Trumpers as a vote base in a lot of those races.

The only question is will the moderates then form there own party or fight in the Republican Party. I think moderates will be marginalised too much and drowned out by the Trumpers for a lot to remain in the GOP. It depends if there are sufficient willing to fight for the conservative vote by either going independent or as a party or instead follow the Lincoln Project approach. It will be interesting to see.

The other thing is if Trump doesn't run in 2024, then we'll have the other candidates (Hawley, Cruz, Pence, Trump Jr etc) trying to out-Trump Trump to get his base which will further drive the direction of the GOP. It definitely won't be a moderate Republican who wins unless something dramatic happens. The infighting between the candidates could be interesting after as the limited norms/etiquette have gone out of window with Trump.

 

[chuckbert]

I still am convinced that Trump will not be a positive supporter of DTJr for 2024. He is too narcissistic to even for that. The idea of his son having the chance of out-doing him will be too much. DTJr's only hope is if the TeaParty morons decide that Trump is their Kim Jong Il and DTJr is KJUn. And that, folks, is a scary proposition for a divided religiously motivated chunk of the USA.

 

[tonyw]

It will certainly be interesting how some Republicans deal with this - particularly absolute hypocrites and careerists such as Ted Cruz. He can only be eyeing a run in 2024 given his backing of Trump and his baseless claims. The man obviously has no pride or principals - Trump variously called him Lyin' Ted, accused his father of being an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald, questioned his Evangelical beliefs, made 'birther' accusations and insulted his wife! And yet, there he is - fully supporting the same man!

If you read some of Ted Cruz's quotes from 2016, it's the most acerbic, brutal (and accurate) character assassination you can imagine. Calls him "utterly amoral", "a pathological liar" and "a narcissist at a level I don't think this country has ever seen". And now, four year's later, he's leading the senate drive to ignore the election results and keep Trump in position. He's just shown himself to be interested in one thing only - power. Lindsey Graham is exactly the same.

There's going to be a big Republican civil war now, because Trump is going to try and take down all those who were insufficiently loyal to him through a succession of primaries in 2022 and beyond. Only question is who will win.....it'll likely vary region by region.

And, honestly, the Democrats are a party divided as well. The socialist course that the likes of Sanders and AOC would want to chart is not the sort of thing that centrists like Biden and Pelosi are likely going to want, let alone try to deliver. Honestly, a schism in both parties that created a three party system - the Socialists, the Trumpists and the Centrists, with the likes of Biden, Booker, Romney and Collins suddenly joining ranks in the same party - would make a ton of sense. But unfortunately won't happen because the two party 'Us vs. Them' system is too heavily ingrained. We'll just likely see a series of more and more vicious primaries preceding the general elections.

 

[Foley]

But unfortunately won't happen because the two party 'Us vs. Them' system is too heavily ingrained. We'll just likely see a series of more and more vicious primaries preceding the general elelections.

Biden at least appears to be moderate and Harris has a fair chance of following him?
My albeit limited discussions with Americans have ,as you suggested , led me to believe that the 2 party system in the US is even more set in stone than in the UK.
Your prediction is not good news!

 

[tonyw]

Biden at least appears to be moderate and Harris has a fair chance of following him?
My albeit limited discussions with Americans have ,as you suggested , led me to believe that the 2 party system in the US is even more set in stone than in the UK.
Your prediction is not good news!

From my perspective, everything that's wrong with the FPTP voting system in the UK is wrong with knobs on in the US.

I mean, find yourself living in a Tory or Labour stronghold in Britain, and your vote is ultimately pretty pointless because there are enough people in your constituency who would vote for a monkey that was wearing a red/blue rosette to render you vote irrelevant. And voting for the Lib Dems in most seats, the Greens anywhere but Brighton, and any other party just about anywhere is really nothing more than a protest vote. But at least Britain is divided up into small enough chunks that the number of disenfranchised voters is at least somewhat minimized.

In the US, presidential and senate votes happen on a state-by-state basis, and I believe Maine and Nebraska are the only states that don't operate on a simple statewide FPTP system - and there's at least a dozen states with a population of more than 8 million people. With the inevitable result that turnouts are usually low (because why bother voting in California or Alabama when you already know what the result is going to be?) and even in swing states, people have a strong tendency to silo ('No-one can win other than the Dems and the GOP, so I'm wasting my vote if I go for anyone else')

Unless and until more states follow Maine's eminently sensible lead and adopt some form of transferable vote system - meaning that a socialist can actually vote for a minority party candidate who most closely matches what they believe in, without thinking in the back of their mind that by not voting for the Democrat they might be helping Trump (and vice versa for conscientious conservatives) - nothing is going to change here.

 

[Golden Dr Otto]

Because he's a t**t and a slim majority of the US population can see that?

I’d say the vast majority.

Most Republicans do not seem to advocate or like him however they consider themselves Republican in political principal and will vote GOP regardless of the candidate. As Tonyw alludes, they consider themselves uncomfortably locked into the game that Trump has cleverly cornered so many into.

 

[Sheik djibouti]

Breaks my heart* that the GOP have lost one Senate seat in Georgia and are set to lose the other one, giving the Dems the Holy grail of Trifecta in the US (for a while anyway).

Who will Trump and his disciples blame this one on, I wonder?

*It doesn't really - I lied like a Trumper!

 

[Wallop]

Breaks my heart* that the GOP have lost one Senate seat in Georgia and are set to lose the other one, giving the Dems the Holy grail of Trifecta in the US (for a while anyway).

Who will Trump and his disciples blame this one on, I wonder?

*It doesn't really - I lied like a Trumper!

It's clearly been stolen - now is it 'count the votes' or 'stop the count'? I will wet myself with laughter if the GOP lose these two seats, hopefully it's by a really small margin and then some GOP supporters say they didn't vote because of all the negative comments from Trump about electoral processes. The outcome of the US elections has been a small ray of hope in an otherwise miserable 12 months.

 

[bazzer9461]

It's clearly been stolen - now is it 'count the votes' or 'stop the count'? I will wet myself with laughter if the GOP lose these two seats, hopefully it's by a really small margin and then some GOP supporters say they didn't vote because of all the negative comments from Trump about electoral processes. The outcome of the US elections has been a small ray of hope in an otherwise miserable 12 months.

Oh how I hope the GOP lose their seats then will look forward to some decent comedy gold from Trump

 

[Marked Ox]

It's clearly been stolen - now is it 'count the votes' or 'stop the count'? I will wet myself with laughter if the GOP lose these two seats, hopefully it's by a really small margin and then some GOP supporters say they didn't vote because of all the negative comments from Trump about electoral processes. The outcome of the US elections has been a small ray of hope in an otherwise miserable 12 months.

Apparently in Dem majority areas the vote numbers are holding up from the Presidential election while the vote numbers in rural GOP areas are down. (from CNN)

 

[Marked Ox]

I will genuinely love that a President who has courted, or at least not discouraged, the White Supremacist and Far Right vote could cause his Party's candidates to lose to a Black man and a Jew.

Further amusement is that Loeffler is willing to disenfranchise her own State's population by voting against the Georgia presidential election result so they have rejected her.

 

[ZeroTheHero]

I think in many ways the Americans and the rest of the world were lucky that Trump was such an *incompetent* sociopathic despot. He was so bat s**t crazy that it was scary, but so lazy and dim that he probably didn't do as much harm as he could have done during his presidency. It makes the blood run a bit cold to think what might have happened if he was a bit brighter and a bit more reasonable on the surface.

 

[chuckbert]

I think in many ways the Americans and the rest of the world were lucky that Trump was such an *incompetent* sociopathic despot. He was so bat s**t crazy that it was scary, but so lazy and dim that he probably didn't do as much harm as he could have done during his presidency. It makes the blood run a bit cold to think what might have happened if he was a bit brighter and a bit more reasonable on the surface.

He’s paved the way for that person. Stress-tested the systems, highlighted the weak points etc.

 

[Wallop]

And so it starts - latest from David Perdue's campaign twitter account.

 

[Marked Ox]

I think in many ways the Americans and the rest of the world were lucky that Trump was such an *incompetent* sociopathic despot. He was so bat s**t crazy that it was scary, but so lazy and dim that he probably didn't do as much harm as he could have done during his presidency. It makes the blood run a bit cold to think what might have happened if he was a bit brighter and a bit more reasonable on the surface.

Trump still has a sting in the tail but I hope Biden can stop this:

Trump administration opens up millions of acres of protected Arctic land for oil development

The Trump administration has finalized its plan to open a vast amount of protected land in Arctic Alaska to develop oil.

abcnews.go.com

On your last part, I hope this helps the weaknesses to be strengthened. If nothing else, the Supreme Court has remained independent (even with a Consevative majority) and reaffirmed state law.

 

[Marked Ox]

And so it starts - latest from David Perdue's campaign twitter account.

View attachment 5245

Predictable really, it is the only playbook Trumpers have. Just need Ossoff to get the gap between them over 0.5% so Perdue can't demand a recount.

 

[38yearsofpain]

From my perspective, everything that's wrong with the FPTP voting system in the UK is wrong with knobs on in the US.

I mean, find yourself living in a Tory or Labour stronghold in Britain, and your vote is ultimately pretty pointless because there are enough people in your constituency who would vote for a monkey that was wearing a red/blue rosette to render you vote irrelevant. And voting for the Lib Dems in most seats, the Greens anywhere but Brighton, and any other party just about anywhere is really nothing more than a protest vote. But at least Britain is divided up into small enough chunks that the number of disenfranchised voters is at least somewhat minimized.

In the US, presidential and senate votes happen on a state-by-state basis, and I believe Maine and Nebraska are the only states that don't operate on a simple statewide FPTP system - and there's at least a dozen states with a population of more than 8 million people. With the inevitable result that turnouts are usually low (because why bother voting in California or Alabama when you already know what the result is going to be?) and even in swing states, people have a strong tendency to silo ('No-one can win other than the Dems and the GOP, so I'm wasting my vote if I go for anyone else')

Unless and until more states follow Maine's eminently sensible lead and adopt some form of transferable vote system - meaning that a socialist can actually vote for a minority party candidate who most closely matches what they believe in, without thinking in the back of their mind that by not voting for the Democrat they might be helping Trump (and vice versa for conscientious conservatives) - nothing is going to change here.

At least in US it can be achieved state by state. In the UK it will always be all or nothing. The only thing you can say about most MP's in the UK irrespective of party are they will never relinquish self interest even for the greater good.
History demonstrates the only way it will change is if the public in sufficient numbers fight vey hard for it.

 

[Sheik djibouti]

He’s paved the way for that person. Stress-tested the systems, highlighted the weak points etc.

A very fair point and the concern longer term is that he is simply a pathfinder for future, more competent anti-democrats to prevail.

Biden/Harris ....HAVE to find a way to counter that, but as we have said previously, the two party system has become ever more polarised and the rhetoric has become ever more caustic to the point of violence against the perceived enemy. I would love to think that truth will eventually win out over "alternative facts" and that what unites is more attractive than what divides and that the US will embark on a journey of wising up after decades of dumbing down.

But I'm not that naive! and whatever happens there are probably bumpy (bumpier) times ahead in US politics, starting with Trumpist protests today and at the Biden inauguration in a couple of weeks. It will be interesting to see just how resolute those protesters are prepared to be when they don't have the President in their corner egging them on (from a safe distance of course)

The only hope is that Trump is prosecuted to the full extent of the law on the basis of incontrovertible fact and made an example of.