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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
he needs to lose categorically. he needs to get reamed in such a way that republicans say “never again.” they’ve been such filthy enablers they need an electoral flogging for course correction.
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Bret Stephens (you know him - theoretically we should have nothing in common with the guy) said the same thing right before the 2016 election on
Fareed Zakaria GPS:
ZAKARIA: So, Bret, I have to ask you. You have written eloquently against Donald Trump from the beginning. The rest of the establishment has pretty much collapsed and surrendered and entered his not particularly warm embrace. Are you going to vote for Donald Trump in the fall?
STEPHENS: I most certainly will not vote for Donald Trump. I will vote for the least left-wing opponent to Donald Trump and I want to make sure that he is the biggest loser in presidential history since I don't know, Alf Landon or going back further.
It's important that Donald Trump and what he represents, this kind of ethnic, quote, conservatism, or populism be so decisively rebuked that the Republican Party and Republicans voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way shape or form.
So they have to learn a lesson in the way perhaps Democrats learned a lesson from McGovern, in '72. George Will has said let's have him lose in 50 states; why not Guam, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, too.
ZAKARIA: And will The Wall Street Journal editorialize to the same effect?
STEPHENS: The Wall Street Journal has not endorsed a candidate since Herbert Hoover and we will not repeat that mistake.
[laughter]
Numbers aside, the McGovern comparison is an abomination (again, this is Bret fucking Stephens), but the point is here we are, four years later, Republicans haven't learned jack shit and they
won't. Let's say Trump loses (I'm convinced he'll definitely lose the popular vote, but he's got a lot of firepower with the way the Electoral College distorts that vote, an eventual revolt by some legislatures, and the Supreme Court, so let's
hope he loses despite all the antidemocratic bullshit). The loss will not be a 50-state + D.C. + Puerto Rico + freakin' Guam landslide. Since the margin (once more: in terms of the whole fucked-up system, not the at-least-three-more-million-votes-by-PEOPLE that Biden will get) will be slim, the conclusion by Republican strategists will be this: "Remember the last time we won states and segments of the population that were bound to go blue? It was with an ignorant racist mysoginystic lying anti-science egomaniacal corrupt FUCK pretending to be one of the great unwashed - let's get one of
those again!".
Look, this is the best possible scenario, and I'd be very surprised if nobody has written about it already: Trump loses. Fuckin'
loses, leaves the White House, Joe Biden president. End of story? Nope. A LARGE amount of the Republican party, and a SIGNIFICANT percentage of Unitedstateseans (by which I don't mean half; a quarter, let's say, is significant enough) will consider Donald Motherfucking Trump the legitimate president of the U.S. of A., even though the matter has been dealt with and it's over and done, because that's what @realDonaldTrump will keep shouting and shouting, a cancerous message amplified so exponentially by assclowns like Hannity that it will make the birther conspiracy look like a hushed private dinner joke. We're at the height of post-truth worldwide and the Peltors of this planet are starving for horseshit like, "Yeah, but what about all those mail-in ballots found in Roswell, New Mexico with indeterminate DNA!!! President Trump is still
PRESIDENT TRUMP!!!!! WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS KEYBOARD I WANT MORE EXCLAMATION POINTS PER SECOND!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Sure, we will laugh 'em off and focus on whether Biden is doing the best possible job in fixing this hotel room that has been thrashed by the shittiest rockstar in history. (Something Joe will simply not be able to do without a majority in Congress, by the way, so people, PLEASE do not throw away your down-ballot choice). But while we keep our eye on the ball, the next generation of hotel room wreckers will develop an even more symbiotic relationship with the GOP. A Republican course correction is the last thing I expect.