Agree with you here. I supported DeSantis because I saw Trump to be soft on LGBT, only for DeSantis to be just as soft.
I hope Trump wins though, partially because of Project 2025 (will be rebranded under a different name but still a lot will happen), partially because there's no guarantee he won't run in 2028 if he doesn't get his second term now, partially because I want Alito and Thomas swapped out with just as based 50-year old justices, and partially because I'm worried about the Democrats going after Elon Musk if Trump loses.
Trump losing and being the nominee again in 2028 would be the worst case scenario yeah. That would be absolutely infuriating. Richard Hanania's unflattering portrayals of Republican voters would honestly be completely justified if that's the outcome.
My only question is, how can you guarantee that the Republican Party would take a Trump loss as a sign to move back to the right?
From my perspective, they’d probably chalk up the loss to appearing “too extreme” (think Project 2025 and JD Vance), and decide to lean even further left.
Instead of listening to disaffected voters, they’d just keep courting pro-abortion voters and bringing more “based MAGA sexy trans women” to rallies.
Voting is an outlet for anger and frustrations. It’s a bit like calling talk radio or ranting to a stranger in a bar. It makes you feel better for a while. I vote in all elections, no matter how obscure, which I guess indicates I’m somehow with a lot of frustrations.
Thanks for a thought provoking article. I agree with some of your positions and disagree with others.
I remember several people voted for Obama because the Repubs had gone so far astray, they did not deserve their vote. That did not work out so well. Obama pushed mainstream many of the things that ail our country now from racial division, to girls getting their breasts cut off, government take over of student loans, killing coal instead of cleaning it up, cradle to grave government handouts etc etc.
While I totally agree that the loyalty to Trump is misguided and frankly bizarre, I feel we have to put the breaks on the progressive movement or whatever we want to call it. The only way I see to do that is vote for Trump.
Trump is a poor leader and will not be able to communicate either the danger to the majority or the better path forward. But he will likely slow down the leftist efforts to minimize our strength on every level and subjugate the people. It is my hope that for once Repubs take this opportunity to effectively regroup and strategically plan a return to sanity. We will see if they have what it takes.
To me not voting is a vote for the Democrat machine that has foisted one massive con job on us after another. RFK Jr speech clearly highlights what we are voting for if we vote against Trump, don’t vote or vote for Harris.
I share Thomas Sowell’s concern included in his recent wsj opinion piece. Another 4 years of the same puppet masters may take our country beyond the point of no return.
>It is my hope that for once Repubs take this opportunity to effectively regroup and strategically plan a return to sanity.<
Regardless of whether Trump wins or loses, this needs to be the next step. We'll just have to see how many people are interested in doing this or not. My read is that people usually have no interest in reconsidering their course when they feel that they are "winning," but we'll see how it all plays out.
>I share Thomas Sowell’s concern included in his recent wsj opinion piece. Another 4 years of the same puppet masters may take our country beyond the point of no return.<
My issue with this notion is that people say this about every election for as long as I've been alive, or at least as long as I've been paying attention to this stuff. People said this in 2016, then again in 2020. Every election is the apocalypse. It's played out. For me you only get to use that line once, if you say it once and then we lose, well at that point logically the country is now "beyond the point of no return" so why should I bother voting next time?
Hi Person Online, you are definitely correct about the “most important election ever” hyperbole. It is tiresome but as always more than one thing can be true at once. Every election is important and as we learned during Covid all elections, including the local ones, have serious ramifications. The parties have done a great disservice by crying wolf imo. It has numbed people to the continuum we have been on as we slide down the hill towards a more totalitarian system with Big Government in bed with Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Food all with a desire to control our speech and actions in service to their ever expanding power. While the trend started before Obama, the Country really screwed up when we elected him. That was a critically important election that we got wrong mainly becuase the Repubs were so ineffective. Obama got a lot of what ails us rolling in his administration. Trump slowed it down a little and things have been progressing at rocket speed under Biden’s handlers. I do believe it is possible to hit a point of no return. Based on the election interference in 2020 and again in 2024, we may be closer to that point than we realize. I respect Thomas Sowell immensely and tend to trust his judgement. If he is worried, I am worried.
Largely agree. Here in Washington St, my presidential vote certainly doesn't matter at all and so I'll be writing in my own name for the 5th consecutive election.
Ben Dover got 1 vote at the Libertarian convention. I’m also seriously considering Ben as a write-in candidate…if I don’t write in Ron Paul or Thomas Sowell.
There are other candidates and issues to vote on besides Trump. Local school board elections are a perfect example. "I don't care, I homeschool, all the other idiot parents can send their kids to public school if they want. It will never effect me or my children." Sure, except all those young minds full of mush will soak up the leftist indoctrination unchecked because you and every other "principled" right winger chose to make a statement and let the leftists win by 500 votes every cycle . You and your children will have to live in that world full of dip shit Marxists and gender confused pedophiles.
I agree with you about viewing politicians as tools to be discarded when they are no longer useful. Trump is not our savior. He is a bridge away from the "lose gracefully" Democrat light Republicans who are scared of the main stream media. I think he has done more to send a message to cuck Republicans than any absent vote ever has.
How are the Republicans even supposed to know why you didn't vote when you refuse to vote in order to teach them a lesson?
I agree that there are other things to vote for besides Trump. I would definitely value local elections over national ones. I imagine that in the future I will vote locally while not bothering to vote federally.
>How are the Republicans even supposed to know why you didn't vote when you refuse to vote in order to teach them a lesson?<
As I've said elsewhere: Because I am sitting here writing an entire article on it. They aren't going to hear me because I am one random anon and for the most part no one agrees with me, in the same way that my one individual vote won't matter anyways. But if a large number of people adopted my mindset and said the same thing, they'd see that and feel pressure from it in the same way that the Democrats feel pressure from the loud people on their side who are anti-Israel.
Wouldn't it be more productive to organize folks to vote for a better candidate in the primary than to organize folks to not vote in the general?
Leaving the top of the ticket blank while voting down ballot candidates and measures would also be a message that the political elites would be more likely to see and respond to.
Although I respect your position, especially the part about not participating in a system that is inherently opposed to our values and interests, I disagree with the second section, where you speak about why voting for Trump would not be acceptable even if voting mattered.
Take the example of the pro-Hamas protestors. They may make a lot of noise, and appear to be intransigent, but the reality is that the Democrats will continue to be a pro-Israel party, as Kamala has already demonstrated, and the vast majority of those protesters will fall into line and vote Democrats come the presidential elections.
This is because the reality of the leftist political strategy is the exact opposite of what you have outlined. They know that to achieve their ideological goals, they need to hold power first. The history of western democracies has been the history of leftists and progressives slowly but constantly pushing the Overton window ever leftwards, even if, at times, it means voting for candidates that don’t agree with values that they hold as fundamental.
This is why voting for Trump is important. Yes, he’s a mess. Yes, he’s bad on abortion, on homosexuality, on in vitro fertilization, and probably on many other issues. But having people like him in power pushes the envelope of what is currently acceptable closer to what we want. This from an ideological perspective.
From a purely practical perspective, these elections might decide the fate of the USA. If Democrats are allowed to continue importing millions of immigrants for another four years, then the country is doomed. Those immigrants will reproduce, and their descendants will continue to vote for the party that caters to their interests. The chances for a right wing government to gain power will gradually reduce until they become nil.
Trump is far from perfect, but it’s the best the country can do at this time. Voting for Trump doesn’t mean abandoning the issues that he’s bad on, it means allowing someone who is ideologically closer to you that a Democrat president could ever be to take power, and permitting you to try to push the ideological stance of the ruling party closer to your own.
My contention is that Trump actually moves the Overton window even further left on stuff like LGBT and abortion, which to me is just a dealbreaker. In light of that I don't know if I can really agree that he moves the Overton window closer to me overall. His victory would suggest to Republicans that giving up and being liberal on that stuff is a winning strategy, and I think I would rather take the immediate loss than have that be the precedent.
Also, if you think immigration will lead to permanent one-party rule by Democrats, I've got bad news for you, it's way too late on that one. Whites are going to be a minority within our lifetime and Donald Trump won't be able to stop that or do much of anything about it. One of the main reasons this election is still competitive is actually because a surprising amount of Hispanics are willing to vote Republican. If you reject "castizo futurism" though then you need to join me over here on the "this shit doesn't matter" bench because you aren't going to change the demographic trajectory by voting, that ship sailed a long time ago.
I read the Ed Feser article, and I find it really difficult to credit. All of his arguments are predicated on judgments about the relative importance and severity of potential outcomes. But he displays a degree of political naivety that makes his judgments on those matters impossible to take seriously. He clearly hasn't figured out that Ron De Santis has been a construct/cut-out for the Professionally Republican (i.e., the GOP old-guard Establishment) since at least the time he left Congress (2018), the latest instantiation of McCain, Romney, and Jeb! And don't get me started about his still taking offense at Trump's actions in the wake of the 2020 election. The whole thing comes across as a Respectability Enjoyer trying to justify his instinctive, class-based, aesthetic distaste for the Bad Orange Man without completely giving the game away. Given his manifest bad judgment about those issues, I see no reason to trust his judgment with respect to any other political issues.
Here's why I'm voting for Trump. It is manifestly the case that the Deep State needs to be burned to the ground. It is also manifestly the case that Trump is the only political candidate that comes anywhere close to understanding that, let alone being willing to do anything about it. That, combined with the fact that the Deep State clearly views him as an existential threat, is all I need.
And it should be all that you or anyone else needs. Because seriously, to hell with those people. Anyone they hate that much has to have something going for him.
I don't care much about the election 2020 stuff, which is why I didn't talk about it here and stuck to my core objection. My main problem with Trump's behavior surrounding that election wasn't that it was morally wrong or anything like that, rather it's that it wasn't useful and ultimately accomplished nothing (I would argue that if anything it's proven to be highly counter-productive). Here we are 4 years after the fact and what good did any of that stuff do us? Apparently none because right now we are set up for the exact same outcome to play itself out all over again with no changes.
>He clearly hasn't figured out that Ron De Santis has been a construct/cut-out for the Professionally Republican (i.e., the GOP old-guard Establishment) since at least the time he left Congress (2018), the latest instantiation of McCain, Romney, and Jeb!<
If true, this implies that Mitt Romney is considerably more based than Donald Trump on some really crucial issues such as LGBT, abortion, and valuing family in general. That's a problem! If your sell is that you're more based than the lame old neocons, then you shouldn't have preferences that are actually to the left of them on such key issues.
>Here's why I'm voting for Trump. It is manifestly the case that the Deep State needs to be burned to the ground. It is also manifestly the case that Trump is the only political candidate that comes anywhere close to understanding that, let alone being willing to do anything about it.<
If I thought this were true I would consider it as a reason to vote for him. The problem with this is that we already did a test run of this thesis in 2016. If you view things as a fight between Trump and the deep state, well, the deep state KO'd him pretty easily in round one. So why are we sending the same guy back in who just got his bell rung? Doesn't make sense. I think it's actually bad to reward failure with endless unearned second chances. As I argued, that's not what a serious political movement would do. While it's true that Trump's 2016 victory was a historic upset, I think he's proven since then that it was more of a fluke (possibly a result of the enemy not taking him very seriously) than due to him having any kind of special ability, because he's done nothing but lose nonstop ever since.
If you pay attention, you do see signs that Trump has learned from his mistakes. And from four years of unprovoked Deep State/DNC persecution. If there's one thing we know about Donald Trump, it's that he holds grudges. Which, in this situation, is precisely what needs to happen. He's saying things now that he wasn't saying in 2016-20. I think he understands what happened to him during that period.
Look, I'm not saying that he will actually burn the Deep State to the ground. I'm not even saying he represents a "serious political movement"--something that the U.S. hasn't seen for generations anyway. I am saying that he has the potential to break a lot of things--and people--in the federal government. I'm all for it.
Well, I'll definitely say that if Trump actually *does* win and then he actually *does* break things in a way that he didn't the first time around, that will come as a pleasant surprise to me and I'll be the first person to admit that I got it wrong.
I mean, I'm by no means convinced either of those things will happen.
But they might. They might not, but even then, the worst that happens is that we don't get Obama's fourth term until at least 2029.
But all that stuff about Trump "setting social conservatism back"? High quality, uncut copium. The Republican Party stopped caring about social conservatism a long, long time ago. Getting annoyed at Trump about that is like blaming the coronor for someone's death because he's the one who filled out the death certificate.
>But all that stuff about Trump "setting social conservatism back"? High quality, uncut copium. The Republican Party stopped caring about social conservatism a long, long time ago. Getting annoyed at Trump about that is like blaming the coronor for someone's death because he's the one who filled out the death certificate.<
That's a valid reading of things, but if true, doesn't really change my conclusion--to vote for Trump would be to sign off on this development, which I will be taking a pass on.
No, it isn't. Acknowledging something to be the case and acting accordingly does not require or imply that one approves. It merely indicates one is willing to deal with the world as it is rather than only as one wishes it were. Which is cope.
My worry is that if the Dems win again they'll make it so there is no meaningful choice in 2028. Given the amount of election fraud it's not even clear there's a choice in 2024.
Yeah the fraud angle is something I didn't touch on, in part because John Carter already covered it really well just the other day. But if you believe in the election fraud narrative then what exactly has Trump done to prevent the same shit from being run the same way over again? Not much, as far as I can tell. It's going to be hard to have sympathy for him this time if he does the same song and dance over again after losing. You had 4 years to prep this time buddy, what have you been doing?
Well for starters Elon now owns Twitter so the evidence won't be censored on social media.
However, the main point is that the fraud problem is not going to get better in 2028. We might have a chance in 2024, we're a lot less likely to have any chance by 2028.
I honestly don't think any amount of evidence matters. Believing that an election was literally stolen is like believing that Israel did 9/11. It's too dangerous for people to actually consider it objectively. They will only come out and "believe" it once they perceive that it has become safe to do so. To be fair, Elon owning Twitter does nudge things in that direction, but probably not enough to really tip the scales IMO. Ben Shapiro still isn't going to give it the time of day. That would be my bellwether for the normiecons turning--if Ben Shapiro says the election was stolen, now we're cooking with gas.
This is one reason I wish Trump would go away. If we go with the hypothesis of election fraud, and the election is stolen again in November, Trump being there is a confounding factor. Normiecons will just remember 2020 and default to the same narratives dismissing the whole thing out of hand. Nothing will have been learned. Whereas if there is someone else besides Trump on the ballot, and the election still gets stolen, now the excuse of Donald Trump has been removed and maybe the conversation can actually move forward. One of my early posts was about this.
> It's too dangerous for people to actually consider it objectively.
Depends on whether Elon openly promotes it on twitter.
> Normiecons will just remember 2020 and default to the same narratives dismissing the whole thing out of hand.
In the immediate aftermath of the election normiecons weren't dismissing it out of hand.
> Whereas if there is someone else besides Trump on the ballot, and the election still gets stolen, now the excuse of Donald Trump has been removed and maybe the conversation can actually move forward.
I don't think so. Right-wing politics has centered on Donald Trump since 2016. Since then it has just been about promoting him and going along with whatever he wants. We can have a discussion about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I think it started off good and has worn out its welcome as time has gone on. But either way it seems clear that any further refinement of the right as a political movement is only going to move forward after Trump is finally gone and no longer sucking up all the air in the room.
The thing about the Trump obsession is that it doesn't seem to be only his critics who can't get over him. As far as I can tell, most of his supporters haven't really changed their thinking much since 2016 either.
Disagree, only because his conservative judicial appointments are actually pretty based (often much moreso than he is personally) and this lays the groundwork for further advances in the future. On this issue alone I think a vote for Trump can be justified.
But I'm British so I'll probably keep voting Reform UK for the foreseeable future.
Trump does have a cult of personality. Such a cult seems to be the only weapon that can fight leftism. You complain trump is against your values, then you say you want skinsuit corpse presidents; Christian edition?
If the skinsuit corpse presidents correlate to actually promoting my values and policy preferences? I mean, yeah, obviously. That's what politics is about. People that treat politics like a popularity contest are getting it fundamentally wrong. To the extent that it is such a contest, it's only so in an instrumental fashion, as a means to the end of getting your preferences reflected in government. If you're not ultimately getting that, then what are you even doing?
I disagree that Trump's cult of personality is "the only weapon that can fight leftism" in large part because, in my estimation, he hasn't been fighting leftism all that effectively since he came into the picture. Since 2016 he has done nothing but lose. If he loses again this year, that will be the 4th election cycle in a row that has gone badly for Republicans. How many more are we expected to lose before we question this idea that Trump has some kind of special power to "fight the left" when he can't even win elections? If he loses elections, and his policy preferences aren't even consistently right-wing, what's his actual selling point?
This is why I come to the conclusion that a lot of people really are just supporting him because of vibes rather than substance.
Cult of personality politicians outside of the us have seen far more success than any attempts at skinsuit Christianity. Skinsuit politics in general are tools of bureaucracy and bureaucracy always privileges the left by its nature.
Trump is not the most successful or useful cult of personality politician to have ever existed. Yet he still gave the pro life nuts the biggest victory in their lifetimes. Do you really think a mitt Romney would have done the same?
Yes, actually I do. Mitt Romney's 2012 platform was explicitly pro-life. Donald Trump has removed almost all language referencing abortion from the 2024 platform, it's ridiculously weak on the issue by comparison. Seems pretty straightforward! You can say there are other areas where Trump would do things that Romney wouldn't, and I'd probably agree, but this isn't one of them.
Mitt Romney was a outwardly pro life politician, but he was also ‘respectable’. A respectable republicans would have sworn in a moderate justice rather than any hardliners. Respectable politicians do nothing to try and upset the status who, whether because of kompromat or earnest delusion.
I would argue that the justices Trump swore in mostly haven't been hardliners either, the only one that might qualify is Gorsuch. The others seem to side with the left sometimes. It wasn't clear at all beforehand that they would actually overturn Roe; I and many others certainly didn't think they would. If Trump had actually nominated serious "hardliners" this would not be the case, I would've been able to say "oh yeah, Roe is toast if it gets in front of these guys."
The picks were generally hardline originalists rather than full throated right wingers. In trumps mind he probably primarily saw this as good for business rather than being the key for striking down Roe, but it happened to work out that way and he was running in the evangelical party.
Great article. While I would certainly not admonish anyone to "Vote Harder" as I think its a bit like cheering for professional wrestlers at this point, one problem that I see with the strategy of withholding your vote to discipline the party, is that the GOP is likely to take the opposite message from that.
The establishment folk already dont like Trump, and view him as too far right (thats why they were desperately astroturfing Nikki Haley). A lack of turnout for Trump will likely be interpreted as a call to "RETVRN TO JEB" rather than a demand for a more Based platform.
I think the best case scenario would be a Trump win, where he hopefully learns some lessons from his first term and makes some better cabinet picks. While I'm sure he would be underwhelming, it would be better than the Harris Committee, and it would hopefully set Vance up as a candidate for '28
I have no say in who my choices of candidates are. By the time the presidential primaries make it to my state its already decided. In a perfect world I would get a great candidate that agrees with my core values. But we don’t live in a perfect world, and I don’t subscribe to the mentality of “I didn’t get everything I want so I’m taking my ball and going home. “ The perfect is the enemy of the good, and when it comes nominating federal and Supreme Court judges (among other important issues) the “good” is good enough for me
Agree with you here. I supported DeSantis because I saw Trump to be soft on LGBT, only for DeSantis to be just as soft.
I hope Trump wins though, partially because of Project 2025 (will be rebranded under a different name but still a lot will happen), partially because there's no guarantee he won't run in 2028 if he doesn't get his second term now, partially because I want Alito and Thomas swapped out with just as based 50-year old justices, and partially because I'm worried about the Democrats going after Elon Musk if Trump loses.
Trump losing and being the nominee again in 2028 would be the worst case scenario yeah. That would be absolutely infuriating. Richard Hanania's unflattering portrayals of Republican voters would honestly be completely justified if that's the outcome.
My only question is, how can you guarantee that the Republican Party would take a Trump loss as a sign to move back to the right?
From my perspective, they’d probably chalk up the loss to appearing “too extreme” (think Project 2025 and JD Vance), and decide to lean even further left.
Instead of listening to disaffected voters, they’d just keep courting pro-abortion voters and bringing more “based MAGA sexy trans women” to rallies.
Either that or blame everything on fraud.
This is why the right loses.
The left doesn't care. If falls in line. That's why it wins.
Very disappointing.
Voting is an outlet for anger and frustrations. It’s a bit like calling talk radio or ranting to a stranger in a bar. It makes you feel better for a while. I vote in all elections, no matter how obscure, which I guess indicates I’m somehow with a lot of frustrations.
Thanks for a thought provoking article. I agree with some of your positions and disagree with others.
I remember several people voted for Obama because the Repubs had gone so far astray, they did not deserve their vote. That did not work out so well. Obama pushed mainstream many of the things that ail our country now from racial division, to girls getting their breasts cut off, government take over of student loans, killing coal instead of cleaning it up, cradle to grave government handouts etc etc.
While I totally agree that the loyalty to Trump is misguided and frankly bizarre, I feel we have to put the breaks on the progressive movement or whatever we want to call it. The only way I see to do that is vote for Trump.
Trump is a poor leader and will not be able to communicate either the danger to the majority or the better path forward. But he will likely slow down the leftist efforts to minimize our strength on every level and subjugate the people. It is my hope that for once Repubs take this opportunity to effectively regroup and strategically plan a return to sanity. We will see if they have what it takes.
To me not voting is a vote for the Democrat machine that has foisted one massive con job on us after another. RFK Jr speech clearly highlights what we are voting for if we vote against Trump, don’t vote or vote for Harris.
I share Thomas Sowell’s concern included in his recent wsj opinion piece. Another 4 years of the same puppet masters may take our country beyond the point of no return.
>It is my hope that for once Repubs take this opportunity to effectively regroup and strategically plan a return to sanity.<
Regardless of whether Trump wins or loses, this needs to be the next step. We'll just have to see how many people are interested in doing this or not. My read is that people usually have no interest in reconsidering their course when they feel that they are "winning," but we'll see how it all plays out.
>I share Thomas Sowell’s concern included in his recent wsj opinion piece. Another 4 years of the same puppet masters may take our country beyond the point of no return.<
My issue with this notion is that people say this about every election for as long as I've been alive, or at least as long as I've been paying attention to this stuff. People said this in 2016, then again in 2020. Every election is the apocalypse. It's played out. For me you only get to use that line once, if you say it once and then we lose, well at that point logically the country is now "beyond the point of no return" so why should I bother voting next time?
Hi Person Online, you are definitely correct about the “most important election ever” hyperbole. It is tiresome but as always more than one thing can be true at once. Every election is important and as we learned during Covid all elections, including the local ones, have serious ramifications. The parties have done a great disservice by crying wolf imo. It has numbed people to the continuum we have been on as we slide down the hill towards a more totalitarian system with Big Government in bed with Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Food all with a desire to control our speech and actions in service to their ever expanding power. While the trend started before Obama, the Country really screwed up when we elected him. That was a critically important election that we got wrong mainly becuase the Repubs were so ineffective. Obama got a lot of what ails us rolling in his administration. Trump slowed it down a little and things have been progressing at rocket speed under Biden’s handlers. I do believe it is possible to hit a point of no return. Based on the election interference in 2020 and again in 2024, we may be closer to that point than we realize. I respect Thomas Sowell immensely and tend to trust his judgement. If he is worried, I am worried.
Largely agree. Here in Washington St, my presidential vote certainly doesn't matter at all and so I'll be writing in my own name for the 5th consecutive election.
I’ll write your name in Idaho, maybe you’ll win something 😂
lol, thank you for your support.
Ben Dover got 1 vote at the Libertarian convention. I’m also seriously considering Ben as a write-in candidate…if I don’t write in Ron Paul or Thomas Sowell.
People who are extremely sanctimonious about the fact that they vote are funny to me.
There are other candidates and issues to vote on besides Trump. Local school board elections are a perfect example. "I don't care, I homeschool, all the other idiot parents can send their kids to public school if they want. It will never effect me or my children." Sure, except all those young minds full of mush will soak up the leftist indoctrination unchecked because you and every other "principled" right winger chose to make a statement and let the leftists win by 500 votes every cycle . You and your children will have to live in that world full of dip shit Marxists and gender confused pedophiles.
I agree with you about viewing politicians as tools to be discarded when they are no longer useful. Trump is not our savior. He is a bridge away from the "lose gracefully" Democrat light Republicans who are scared of the main stream media. I think he has done more to send a message to cuck Republicans than any absent vote ever has.
How are the Republicans even supposed to know why you didn't vote when you refuse to vote in order to teach them a lesson?
I agree that there are other things to vote for besides Trump. I would definitely value local elections over national ones. I imagine that in the future I will vote locally while not bothering to vote federally.
>How are the Republicans even supposed to know why you didn't vote when you refuse to vote in order to teach them a lesson?<
As I've said elsewhere: Because I am sitting here writing an entire article on it. They aren't going to hear me because I am one random anon and for the most part no one agrees with me, in the same way that my one individual vote won't matter anyways. But if a large number of people adopted my mindset and said the same thing, they'd see that and feel pressure from it in the same way that the Democrats feel pressure from the loud people on their side who are anti-Israel.
Wouldn't it be more productive to organize folks to vote for a better candidate in the primary than to organize folks to not vote in the general?
Leaving the top of the ticket blank while voting down ballot candidates and measures would also be a message that the political elites would be more likely to see and respond to.
Although I respect your position, especially the part about not participating in a system that is inherently opposed to our values and interests, I disagree with the second section, where you speak about why voting for Trump would not be acceptable even if voting mattered.
Take the example of the pro-Hamas protestors. They may make a lot of noise, and appear to be intransigent, but the reality is that the Democrats will continue to be a pro-Israel party, as Kamala has already demonstrated, and the vast majority of those protesters will fall into line and vote Democrats come the presidential elections.
This is because the reality of the leftist political strategy is the exact opposite of what you have outlined. They know that to achieve their ideological goals, they need to hold power first. The history of western democracies has been the history of leftists and progressives slowly but constantly pushing the Overton window ever leftwards, even if, at times, it means voting for candidates that don’t agree with values that they hold as fundamental.
This is why voting for Trump is important. Yes, he’s a mess. Yes, he’s bad on abortion, on homosexuality, on in vitro fertilization, and probably on many other issues. But having people like him in power pushes the envelope of what is currently acceptable closer to what we want. This from an ideological perspective.
From a purely practical perspective, these elections might decide the fate of the USA. If Democrats are allowed to continue importing millions of immigrants for another four years, then the country is doomed. Those immigrants will reproduce, and their descendants will continue to vote for the party that caters to their interests. The chances for a right wing government to gain power will gradually reduce until they become nil.
Trump is far from perfect, but it’s the best the country can do at this time. Voting for Trump doesn’t mean abandoning the issues that he’s bad on, it means allowing someone who is ideologically closer to you that a Democrat president could ever be to take power, and permitting you to try to push the ideological stance of the ruling party closer to your own.
My contention is that Trump actually moves the Overton window even further left on stuff like LGBT and abortion, which to me is just a dealbreaker. In light of that I don't know if I can really agree that he moves the Overton window closer to me overall. His victory would suggest to Republicans that giving up and being liberal on that stuff is a winning strategy, and I think I would rather take the immediate loss than have that be the precedent.
Also, if you think immigration will lead to permanent one-party rule by Democrats, I've got bad news for you, it's way too late on that one. Whites are going to be a minority within our lifetime and Donald Trump won't be able to stop that or do much of anything about it. One of the main reasons this election is still competitive is actually because a surprising amount of Hispanics are willing to vote Republican. If you reject "castizo futurism" though then you need to join me over here on the "this shit doesn't matter" bench because you aren't going to change the demographic trajectory by voting, that ship sailed a long time ago.
I read the Ed Feser article, and I find it really difficult to credit. All of his arguments are predicated on judgments about the relative importance and severity of potential outcomes. But he displays a degree of political naivety that makes his judgments on those matters impossible to take seriously. He clearly hasn't figured out that Ron De Santis has been a construct/cut-out for the Professionally Republican (i.e., the GOP old-guard Establishment) since at least the time he left Congress (2018), the latest instantiation of McCain, Romney, and Jeb! And don't get me started about his still taking offense at Trump's actions in the wake of the 2020 election. The whole thing comes across as a Respectability Enjoyer trying to justify his instinctive, class-based, aesthetic distaste for the Bad Orange Man without completely giving the game away. Given his manifest bad judgment about those issues, I see no reason to trust his judgment with respect to any other political issues.
Here's why I'm voting for Trump. It is manifestly the case that the Deep State needs to be burned to the ground. It is also manifestly the case that Trump is the only political candidate that comes anywhere close to understanding that, let alone being willing to do anything about it. That, combined with the fact that the Deep State clearly views him as an existential threat, is all I need.
And it should be all that you or anyone else needs. Because seriously, to hell with those people. Anyone they hate that much has to have something going for him.
I don't care much about the election 2020 stuff, which is why I didn't talk about it here and stuck to my core objection. My main problem with Trump's behavior surrounding that election wasn't that it was morally wrong or anything like that, rather it's that it wasn't useful and ultimately accomplished nothing (I would argue that if anything it's proven to be highly counter-productive). Here we are 4 years after the fact and what good did any of that stuff do us? Apparently none because right now we are set up for the exact same outcome to play itself out all over again with no changes.
>He clearly hasn't figured out that Ron De Santis has been a construct/cut-out for the Professionally Republican (i.e., the GOP old-guard Establishment) since at least the time he left Congress (2018), the latest instantiation of McCain, Romney, and Jeb!<
If true, this implies that Mitt Romney is considerably more based than Donald Trump on some really crucial issues such as LGBT, abortion, and valuing family in general. That's a problem! If your sell is that you're more based than the lame old neocons, then you shouldn't have preferences that are actually to the left of them on such key issues.
>Here's why I'm voting for Trump. It is manifestly the case that the Deep State needs to be burned to the ground. It is also manifestly the case that Trump is the only political candidate that comes anywhere close to understanding that, let alone being willing to do anything about it.<
If I thought this were true I would consider it as a reason to vote for him. The problem with this is that we already did a test run of this thesis in 2016. If you view things as a fight between Trump and the deep state, well, the deep state KO'd him pretty easily in round one. So why are we sending the same guy back in who just got his bell rung? Doesn't make sense. I think it's actually bad to reward failure with endless unearned second chances. As I argued, that's not what a serious political movement would do. While it's true that Trump's 2016 victory was a historic upset, I think he's proven since then that it was more of a fluke (possibly a result of the enemy not taking him very seriously) than due to him having any kind of special ability, because he's done nothing but lose nonstop ever since.
If you pay attention, you do see signs that Trump has learned from his mistakes. And from four years of unprovoked Deep State/DNC persecution. If there's one thing we know about Donald Trump, it's that he holds grudges. Which, in this situation, is precisely what needs to happen. He's saying things now that he wasn't saying in 2016-20. I think he understands what happened to him during that period.
Look, I'm not saying that he will actually burn the Deep State to the ground. I'm not even saying he represents a "serious political movement"--something that the U.S. hasn't seen for generations anyway. I am saying that he has the potential to break a lot of things--and people--in the federal government. I'm all for it.
Well, I'll definitely say that if Trump actually *does* win and then he actually *does* break things in a way that he didn't the first time around, that will come as a pleasant surprise to me and I'll be the first person to admit that I got it wrong.
I mean, I'm by no means convinced either of those things will happen.
But they might. They might not, but even then, the worst that happens is that we don't get Obama's fourth term until at least 2029.
But all that stuff about Trump "setting social conservatism back"? High quality, uncut copium. The Republican Party stopped caring about social conservatism a long, long time ago. Getting annoyed at Trump about that is like blaming the coronor for someone's death because he's the one who filled out the death certificate.
>But all that stuff about Trump "setting social conservatism back"? High quality, uncut copium. The Republican Party stopped caring about social conservatism a long, long time ago. Getting annoyed at Trump about that is like blaming the coronor for someone's death because he's the one who filled out the death certificate.<
That's a valid reading of things, but if true, doesn't really change my conclusion--to vote for Trump would be to sign off on this development, which I will be taking a pass on.
No, it isn't. Acknowledging something to be the case and acting accordingly does not require or imply that one approves. It merely indicates one is willing to deal with the world as it is rather than only as one wishes it were. Which is cope.
My worry is that if the Dems win again they'll make it so there is no meaningful choice in 2028. Given the amount of election fraud it's not even clear there's a choice in 2024.
Yeah the fraud angle is something I didn't touch on, in part because John Carter already covered it really well just the other day. But if you believe in the election fraud narrative then what exactly has Trump done to prevent the same shit from being run the same way over again? Not much, as far as I can tell. It's going to be hard to have sympathy for him this time if he does the same song and dance over again after losing. You had 4 years to prep this time buddy, what have you been doing?
Well for starters Elon now owns Twitter so the evidence won't be censored on social media.
However, the main point is that the fraud problem is not going to get better in 2028. We might have a chance in 2024, we're a lot less likely to have any chance by 2028.
I honestly don't think any amount of evidence matters. Believing that an election was literally stolen is like believing that Israel did 9/11. It's too dangerous for people to actually consider it objectively. They will only come out and "believe" it once they perceive that it has become safe to do so. To be fair, Elon owning Twitter does nudge things in that direction, but probably not enough to really tip the scales IMO. Ben Shapiro still isn't going to give it the time of day. That would be my bellwether for the normiecons turning--if Ben Shapiro says the election was stolen, now we're cooking with gas.
This is one reason I wish Trump would go away. If we go with the hypothesis of election fraud, and the election is stolen again in November, Trump being there is a confounding factor. Normiecons will just remember 2020 and default to the same narratives dismissing the whole thing out of hand. Nothing will have been learned. Whereas if there is someone else besides Trump on the ballot, and the election still gets stolen, now the excuse of Donald Trump has been removed and maybe the conversation can actually move forward. One of my early posts was about this.
> It's too dangerous for people to actually consider it objectively.
Depends on whether Elon openly promotes it on twitter.
> Normiecons will just remember 2020 and default to the same narratives dismissing the whole thing out of hand.
In the immediate aftermath of the election normiecons weren't dismissing it out of hand.
> Whereas if there is someone else besides Trump on the ballot, and the election still gets stolen, now the excuse of Donald Trump has been removed and maybe the conversation can actually move forward.
That's a cop-out excuse and you know it.
>That's a cop-out excuse and you know it.<
I don't think so. Right-wing politics has centered on Donald Trump since 2016. Since then it has just been about promoting him and going along with whatever he wants. We can have a discussion about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I think it started off good and has worn out its welcome as time has gone on. But either way it seems clear that any further refinement of the right as a political movement is only going to move forward after Trump is finally gone and no longer sucking up all the air in the room.
The thing about the Trump obsession is that it doesn't seem to be only his critics who can't get over him. As far as I can tell, most of his supporters haven't really changed their thinking much since 2016 either.
I notice you didn't even mention the fraud in your response.
Disagree, only because his conservative judicial appointments are actually pretty based (often much moreso than he is personally) and this lays the groundwork for further advances in the future. On this issue alone I think a vote for Trump can be justified.
But I'm British so I'll probably keep voting Reform UK for the foreseeable future.
Trump does have a cult of personality. Such a cult seems to be the only weapon that can fight leftism. You complain trump is against your values, then you say you want skinsuit corpse presidents; Christian edition?
If the skinsuit corpse presidents correlate to actually promoting my values and policy preferences? I mean, yeah, obviously. That's what politics is about. People that treat politics like a popularity contest are getting it fundamentally wrong. To the extent that it is such a contest, it's only so in an instrumental fashion, as a means to the end of getting your preferences reflected in government. If you're not ultimately getting that, then what are you even doing?
I disagree that Trump's cult of personality is "the only weapon that can fight leftism" in large part because, in my estimation, he hasn't been fighting leftism all that effectively since he came into the picture. Since 2016 he has done nothing but lose. If he loses again this year, that will be the 4th election cycle in a row that has gone badly for Republicans. How many more are we expected to lose before we question this idea that Trump has some kind of special power to "fight the left" when he can't even win elections? If he loses elections, and his policy preferences aren't even consistently right-wing, what's his actual selling point?
This is why I come to the conclusion that a lot of people really are just supporting him because of vibes rather than substance.
Cult of personality politicians outside of the us have seen far more success than any attempts at skinsuit Christianity. Skinsuit politics in general are tools of bureaucracy and bureaucracy always privileges the left by its nature.
Trump is not the most successful or useful cult of personality politician to have ever existed. Yet he still gave the pro life nuts the biggest victory in their lifetimes. Do you really think a mitt Romney would have done the same?
Yes, actually I do. Mitt Romney's 2012 platform was explicitly pro-life. Donald Trump has removed almost all language referencing abortion from the 2024 platform, it's ridiculously weak on the issue by comparison. Seems pretty straightforward! You can say there are other areas where Trump would do things that Romney wouldn't, and I'd probably agree, but this isn't one of them.
Mitt Romney was a outwardly pro life politician, but he was also ‘respectable’. A respectable republicans would have sworn in a moderate justice rather than any hardliners. Respectable politicians do nothing to try and upset the status who, whether because of kompromat or earnest delusion.
I would argue that the justices Trump swore in mostly haven't been hardliners either, the only one that might qualify is Gorsuch. The others seem to side with the left sometimes. It wasn't clear at all beforehand that they would actually overturn Roe; I and many others certainly didn't think they would. If Trump had actually nominated serious "hardliners" this would not be the case, I would've been able to say "oh yeah, Roe is toast if it gets in front of these guys."
The picks were generally hardline originalists rather than full throated right wingers. In trumps mind he probably primarily saw this as good for business rather than being the key for striking down Roe, but it happened to work out that way and he was running in the evangelical party.
Great article. While I would certainly not admonish anyone to "Vote Harder" as I think its a bit like cheering for professional wrestlers at this point, one problem that I see with the strategy of withholding your vote to discipline the party, is that the GOP is likely to take the opposite message from that.
The establishment folk already dont like Trump, and view him as too far right (thats why they were desperately astroturfing Nikki Haley). A lack of turnout for Trump will likely be interpreted as a call to "RETVRN TO JEB" rather than a demand for a more Based platform.
I think the best case scenario would be a Trump win, where he hopefully learns some lessons from his first term and makes some better cabinet picks. While I'm sure he would be underwhelming, it would be better than the Harris Committee, and it would hopefully set Vance up as a candidate for '28
Sitting things out doesn't earn you a seat at the table. We have zero power and zero ground game.
They don't think about us at all just like no one thinks about the Libertarian Party and those losers always help the Dems win over “muh principles”.
Trump will slow down the decay a little bit and buy us time to develop a ground game.
Get over yourself and help our guys. Vote Trump. Yeah he sucks in a lot of ways. Who cares. This is about winning.
I have no say in who my choices of candidates are. By the time the presidential primaries make it to my state its already decided. In a perfect world I would get a great candidate that agrees with my core values. But we don’t live in a perfect world, and I don’t subscribe to the mentality of “I didn’t get everything I want so I’m taking my ball and going home. “ The perfect is the enemy of the good, and when it comes nominating federal and Supreme Court judges (among other important issues) the “good” is good enough for me