Continued Trump Administration Fallout

[Dill]

(05-05-2021, 01:51 PM)hollodero Wrote: Maybe. Then again, having the presidential party lose seats in midterm elections apparently has a long tradition and is not so extraordinary.

That is what I believe, yeah. I mean, sure, we can debate whether there's a small non-liberal slice of the electorate that does, or if there is no such slice at all. These seem to be the two possibilities and both are a bit depressing.
If there were a critical mass of voters who could not stomach lawlessness, Trump could not have gotten elected in the first place. He already was a known scammer back then, who just had to settle a case regarding running a fraudulent university.
I have a hard time seeing someone saying a university scam is ok but displaying any additional criminal energy is a step too far. On the contrary, I came to believe that Trump was more or less right when he claimed he could shoot someone and not lose voters.

Well, they did lose a bit more than the norm--40 seats.

I still think there is more than a "slice"--the proportion may even be near 50% who still prioritize rule of law--including never trumpers and Cheney and Romney.  But it's now a question of what mass is really needed if Trump can get elected, and then get even more votes the second time around. The question of whether the US can continue as a democracy is still on the table. 

And yeah, as far as Trump university and other scams--remember one of the big knocks against Hillary was the supposed/manufactured corruption surrounding the Clinton foundation, which funneled millions of dollars into real aid for millions of people. "Crooked" Hillary was "corrupt" and "entitled" and a great symbol of the swamp created by deficit-expanding Dems. And she lied and obfuscated about her email service.

Then Trump was elected and suddenly corruption and deficits and lying didn't matter. It was never really about that.

The most charitable interpretation I can put on this is that enough people had been convinced by RWM* that the "elites" running the country were already lawless and so Trump had to do what he had to do. If there is going to be a lawless corrupt person at the pinnacle of power in the US, then let it be someone who favors the "deplorables."  

*One thinks here of Michael Anton's essay from the Claremont Review --"The Flight 93 Election"--in which he argues that voters failed to "storm the cockpit" in 2016, Hillary would likely win two terms and real Americans could no longer get their country back. Rush Limbaugh read the entire essay on his radio show.