Both Putin and Trump are 80s relics and so it matters little how much the wor[l]d has changed, the cold war facet applies to the blindly pro-russian stance of Trump.
Of all the stances to take, this one is insane. Almost every violent conflict has shades of gray, nuance rather than unambiguous good and bad. The Ukraine-Russia conflict is one of those supremely rare straightforward ones where Russia is just straight up the bad guys.
That’s certainly the trajectory Project 2025 wants to really drive home. That’s not exactly a defense of Russia.
Yeah, it’s amazing. He’s not a “Republican” he’s Trump. He’s not your friend/ally/supporter no matter who you are, he only supports himself. Your welfare is only vaguely relevant so long as it directly supports his status, the instant you aren’t useful, you will get backstabbed hard.
Unfortunately that’s not a particularly useful fact to highlight to republicans, and democrats bet too heavily on that being a talking point and it won them no favors.
Sure, that lets people vote for who they want and still vote for someone that will actually win in a larger election, maybe pick up some more local offices.
Frankly Democrats should be big on RCV. The hard right and moderate right vote together, but the progressive is more split and a larger chunk refuses to vote strategically, at least if that is their only vote. RCV gives then the ability to vote the way they want to and still vote for a candidate with more broad acceptance.
Not sure it would have done anything in this presidential race, since there’s no sign of third party vote being enough to change things in any remotely close state. It might have at least relieved the vitriol between would be allies over Democrat voters refusing to vote with the harder left versus the further left refusing to vote strategically with the Democrats.
There would remain the hopefully miniscule but very loud progressives that think either the electorate goes perfectly for their perfect candidate, or else someone like Trump should win to teach those voters a lesson, and maybe break things so hard that a path forward for their favored leaders to get in power.
Nah, this wasn’t democracy dying on live tv. They are saving that for 2026.
So long as we have strict elections of a singular position like president, you are pretty much going to have to vote for lesser evil. It doesn’t matter how many parties are running, the president is a singular office.
Other nations with more robust parties sidestep this by having an elected body figure out the executive, rather than direct elections of that office.
if you want those third parties get them into the house and maybe the Senate, where the task is feasible. For the singular president of the nation, whoever is doing the voting will have to be strategic. I’m disenchanted when I see those parties just make a presidential run without really investing much in the down ballot races.
The fixes are either removing direct presidential election, or severely curtailing the practical powers of the office. We shouldn’t be so subject to the whims of a singular position.
Under this administration, working for the CDC is probably not as boring as it usually is.
You forgot about apathy. Even with a healthier plurality of political parties, the big thing is the majority of potential voters don’t bother. Some because of being lazy, some because it is unreasonably hard for them to get time off of work/contend with suppression.
This administration also highlights that the president matters too much. You can’t have even two parties interest honored when a singular man gets his way so much.
It’s not for no reason, it’s to make Putin happier, maybe extort a bunch of mineral rights out of Ukraine. See, plenty of reason…
The global astronomical community expects the odds of an asteroid to hit Earth in December 2032 to eventually fall to zero.
I love how they make it seem like some insider expertise versus knowing basics of how percentages work.
He’d have a pretty long runway to make his lack of charisma not matter.
He’s likely the key figure in drafting a lot of the executive orders that Trump is rubber stamping. Trump and Musk get a lot of the attention, but Vance is more quietly behind a lot of the stuff, happy to let Trump get the credit for Vance’s and Trump’s contributions.
Sadly every major power tends to be the baddies to some extent, it’s how they get to be and stay major powers. We just get to grade on a curve. Nazi Germany really set the curve and the US got to be the pretty unambiguous good guys, at least up to the firebombing campaign in Japan, the nuclear bombs, and being complicit after the fact in Japanese atrocities by shielding them from consequences.
While we have an “ambient” level of baddie-ness most of the time, we at least have balanced it out by sometimes defending against unjust violence and providing humanitarian aid.
Now Trump seeks to turn that baddie scale up to the max while simultaneously cutting out all aid efforts.
And Germany provides just the word for me in this case: Schadenfreude
Many of the blue states send republicans to the house, and if those districts went the other way, we’d actually have a house that might actually be interested in holding Trump accountable.
Note that without California republican House members, the GOP wouldn’t have a majority. Nevada despite being a ‘Red State’, contributes more democrat than republican representatives. If three red house races had went the other way, Trump would have had much more meaningful resistance.
The federal government ultimately has authority over the blue states, and as such Trump and American companies have access to their resources and/or status.
Note that Musk also was spewing pro-Russian views on Ukraine too.
I’m unsure.
I will readily admit that Vance is younger, healthier, more competent, and just as vile but better at not saying the quiet part out loud.
However, for whatever crazy reason, Trump has his fanatics, and Vance doesn’t have those. What’s left of the GOP are people that have learned the lesson of kissing the ring of Trump. That’s no room for anyone else to lead, submit to Trump. Make no trouble for Trump, do everything you can to advance whatever he says. Do not call him on craziness, you’ll only hurt yourself. As a result, the GOP is unified behind him, with no one even pretending they would ever hold him accountable for anything anymore (remember whiffs of rhetoric early in his first term about accountability, with that having out quickly and stomped out thoroughly with the repudiation of Romney and Chaney).
I don’t see Vance having that status. Without that status, I think vying to be the head of the party is back on the table. Infighting with the current leader becomes a plausible path forward. While he may chase his particular brand of vile agenda, he would be in competition with other GOP agendas.
The daily show did a segment on this. Basically translators can’t bring themselves to speak as embarrassingly as trump. They will think audience will assume them to be bad at translating if they tried for a more true representation. Especially if they try to imitate how the words are spoken as well as what words are spoken.
A few more quarter pounders and perhaps less than four years…
Because ultimately, those armed MAGA people’s faces are just too delicious for the leopards to resist. There’s already been discontent that they aren’t seeing the improvements they wanted, and some of them directly getting screwed by Trump and Musk.