Unofficial Apolyton Predicts

[kentonio]

Really? Cruz? I haven't read up much on him, but he does seem fairly clever and nasty. Of the current batch, he seems best poised to regroup. But . . . hmm. I can't really picture him as a populist. Maybe it's the punchyface.

I'm at least 75% sure he's actually a psychopath. Genuinely. He isn't a populist, but he doesn't need to be, after Trump loses the next time around will be 'OMG, we can't let another crazy populist get the nomination!!'. He'll run on god, taxes and good old fashioned family values, and if Hillary's first term is anything like as depressing as we imagine he'll have a good shot. He terrifies me quite frankly, far more than the idiot currently running.

[kentonio]

Good luck persuading stupid rednecks. Not even Bernie Sanders can.

I think he'd have done well in the general. He's great at making working white folks feel good about themselves and the future.

[Lorizael]

I'm at least 75% sure he's actually a psychopath. Genuinely. He isn't a populist, but he doesn't need to be, after Trump loses the next time around will be 'OMG, we can't let another crazy populist get the nomination!!'. He'll run on god, taxes and good old fashioned family values, and if Hillary's first term is anything like as depressing as we imagine he'll have a good shot. He terrifies me quite frankly, far more than the idiot currently running.

Plus he knows all the words to The Princess Bride.

[Elok]

I'm at least 75% sure he's actually a psychopath. Genuinely. He isn't a populist, but he doesn't need to be, after Trump loses the next time around will be 'OMG, we can't let another crazy populist get the nomination!!'. He'll run on god, taxes and good old fashioned family values, and if Hillary's first term is anything like as depressing as we imagine he'll have a good shot. He terrifies me quite frankly, far more than the idiot currently running.

Then Good News! The current leaders of the Religious Right have done a glorious job of disgracing themselves by slobbering over Trump's knob, and the latest generation of adult Evangelicals, while still quite conservative, is reportedly quite fed up with politics in general as a result. I don't think religion will stop being a major force in American life, but the next four years are going to be a time to heal, if not the next decade.

[Aeson]

No, I don't believe it did. Urban-rural class antagonism has a long, long history in this country, going back to the Revolution or thereabouts at least. Remember Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, the Civil War, William Jennings Bryan, desegregation? To be fair, the rurals very frequently were ignorant, hateful and backwards--and the urbs never stopped telling them so, even when they weren't.

While some really tentative links could be drawn back further, they weren't important (systemically) as recently as the 80's. Politics were cordial most of the time, and there weren't mainstream movements of vitriol and personal attacks. Trump (as he is) couldn't have possibly gotten any traction in the 80's. By dropping the level of discourse into the mud in the 90's, Trump can now "flourish". (Even though he at best has about 30% of the electorate that doesn't detest him personally.)

[Giancarlo]

You are addressing it as if the right is just responding to the left. This is their creation, Gian is actually the response. It matters because this movement on the right started in the 90's, and has very different roots than you are claiming.

1980s actually.

I am the response. Hillary is a compromise. The real left wing movement is coming.

[Giancarlo]

and also gian is just a very confused young man who used to be a white fascist homophobic idiot and is now a brown liberal homosexual idiot. he isn't an exemplar of wider political trends.

And you are a stupid ****ing moron who has misinterpreted the last thirty years of politics. I was never white. Let's not go there.

[Elok]

See, that's not really what C0ckney and I are talking about. At least, I don't think it is. I'm not talking about debased rhetoric like Limbaugh's; if anything, that was a consequence of the contempt I'm referring to here. He appealed primarily to the poor and uneducated, no?* Just like Gingrich and all the rest of those slimeballs. And they all got traction. Those people were angry already. Why?

*Okay, and to rich people who appreciated his work riling up the poor and uneducated.

[Elok]

Dammit, Fez, things were going gloriously in your absence. I just knew you were lying about leaving. Watch your damn movie already, or whatever.

[Giancarlo]

Dammit, Fez, things were going gloriously in your absence. I just knew you were lying about leaving. Watch your damn movie already, or whatever.

Its in an hour. $4 theater.

Don't insult me or you will get burned. In a figurative sense as I would never advocate violence.

Look at it this way... The left will control the majority opinion of this country soon enough. There is nothing 25-30% of people could do.

[Elok]

Yes, we will all be buried beneath an enormous pile of black and latino babies who will continue to vote for an effete and decadent leftist leadership because the right, having offloaded many of its old military-industrial parasites onto the opposition, will dodder around ineffectually and fail to adapt. History will proceed along the exact short-term course which has emerged in the past decade. What a clever boy you are. Now watch your movie.

[Giancarlo]

If you are poor and vote for trump... How dumb is that? He has a history of stiffing contractors and workers. Simply not paying them.

He is part of the ****ing elite. He is someone who always had money and was born in privilege. And he doesn't give a crap about people.

[Aeson]

Limbaugh was right wing fringe. Republicans adopted his platform. That gave it mainstream credibility, it was no longer fringe. While you can say they did so to get the support of a movement, and it did actually help Republicans get control of congress ... it legitimised the fringe and make it mainstream. So it got much more exposure and more traction. The Republican establishment thought they could co-opt it like they did (successfully) the religious right, pay lip service to it, get elected, largely ignore it. Perhaps they could have without the internet and globalization, but they lost control over this anti-intellectual, anti-liberal, anti-establishment movement. Now that movement looks at the Republican establishment as much the same "elites".

[Giancarlo]

Yes, we will all be buried beneath an enormous pile of black and latino babies who will continue to vote for an effete and decadent leftist leadership because the right, having offloaded many of its old military-industrial parasites onto the opposition, will dodder around ineffectually and fail to adapt. History will proceed along the exact short-term course which has emerged in the past decade. What a clever boy you are. Now watch your movie.

What a fool. You didn't even read. I am for an economic based revolution. Empowering minorities and having them obtain quality education is the way up. That way they can take new jobs. I would invest hundreds of billions into aerospace too.

Up to the sky.

[Giancarlo]

We need to get off this planet and **** some other planets up. that's the future.