Are Hopes too High for Convicting Trump?

[Whiskeytide]

39. Republican politicians are caught between their base and ...

... the party as a whole. I think it’s very simple. trump’s genuine base is about 30 to 33% of the general electorate. Those are the assholes that will support anything he vomits up. It may wax and wane a few percentage points here and there, but it’s pretty solid for him.

That translates roughly to somewhere between 50% to 60% of the Republican Party electorate. That’s his power over the party. He controls enough to primary out anyone he disfavors. If you go against trump, you lose a lot of votes, and you’re vulnerable to a trumpie in your primary. Moreover, even if you survive the primary, those votes are not likely to come back and vote for you in the general (since trump shat on you in the primary), and you’re vulnerable there as well.

It’s just math. They HAVE to support him to survive politically.

And the polarization they have fomented for 30+ years is making it worse, I think. As Democrats, we will now turn out and vote for a polished turd over anything that even smells republican. (And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, necessarily. We probably should). But that makes their base that much more critical to them. The Democratic challenger now has an anti-trump advantage built into the equation, and without trump’s blessing, they don’t stand much of a chance except in the reddest of deep red states and districts.

This is the problem with a “populist” who has embraced the foaming mouthed racist, scoff-law, anti-democracy element of the population. They will NEVER go back to rank and file republican status in sufficient and reliably enough numbers to be useful. They are NOT going to vote for Romney, or Kasich, or Rubio, or Cruz (well, maybe Cruz if he projects a little more racism). It’s trump or nothing. And the republican politicians know it now.