"Old and quite weird": Democrats finally discover new effective attack — and Republicans hate it
After nearly a decade of being forced to take Trump seriously, Democrats increasingly call BS on the whole charade
Sure, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy — a would-be dictator on day one who has called for terminating the U.S. Constitution so he can hold onto power even after losing a free and fair election. But while draped in the rhetoric of populism, Trump and his MAGA movement are not actually popular; the man himself has never won more votes than the person he ran against, a majority of Americans twice rejecting him and his off-putting cult of personality. That he was ever president is more or less because a few thousand swing voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania thought it would be fun.
President Joe Biden won in 2020 largely by promising to a return to normalcy and baseline competency. In 2024, Democrats are making a similar argument but more forcibly: They’re pointing, laughing and dismissing Trump and his circus as a total freak show to which we can’t return.
Yep. Watching the Republican cult of personality be exposed this way has given me genuine hope for the future.
It's been ten years since that freak started remaking the Republican party in his own image. Ten years since his face and voice started dominating the news cycle for no good reason (and lots of bad ones). Ten years of his clown show.
But now, at long last, I have hope that it will finally end. That the name "Donald Trump" will fade from our political vocabulary, and be spoken in shame and disgust when spoken at all.
Don't forget the part where all the Republicans pretend they never really supported him in the first place.
This.
Never let anyone who identifies as or admits to voting republican get away with this. Always remind them they had a convicted criminal rapist pussy grabber who stole from from a kids cancer charity running the show. Not just a candidate, he ran the whole clown show.
Doesn't matter if it's an uncle, dad, mom, grandpa or grandma; always be relentless with this message and have no room for sympathy or forgiveness. Be the bigger person? Time to 'heal'? No, no, no. These people wanted to destroy America and you have to throw that into their face relentlessly.
Sure, have a family dinner or some party with family and friends but the moment politics comes up, you hammer this message home and tell them the discussion on politics is over because they have been proven not to be trusted at all when politics is involved. Uncle Bob want to talk fishing lures? Sure, no problem. Uncle Bob wants to talk politics in any way, shape or form? Be very, very fucking brutal in cutting the traitors of and shut them down. They have lost any and all admission to discuss (or, in my opinion, be part of) politics.
Uh, no. It's not popular to admit this, but being nice is much more persuasive with people who already like you. If you go nuts on them, they will just think you are crazy.
If you say "I think trump is too old and crazy / weird" they will listen. If they ask "Do you like trump?" just say "no" and laugh at the very idea of voting for him. That's why "He's weird" is working.
Yep. I look forward to that day, but we need to remind them of the truth when they try to pull that.
Just like the origins of the "tea party", just like how they called themselves "teabaggers" (no matter how much they insist now that it never happened), just like they swooned over both W and Romney, but pretended they "didn't know her" when W's war on Iraq was obvious to even the lowest of low-info that it was a clusterfuck, and when Romney lost to the Blah guy.
Yep. Gonna be big “I was part of the civilian resistance” post-WW2 vibes in the aftermath of all this.
I’m prepared to remind every smug boomer I know until the day they die, and I relish in the opportunity.
The Republican Party eagerly embraced him. They wanted this.
This needs to be repeated over and over. Remind everyone when Trump is gone. He isn't the threat people, he is a threat.
The seeds of his "movement" were planted by 4chan and other terminally online far right trolls long before he ever took the reins. It's been brewing since the mid-to-late-2000s but was mostly contained to their own corners of the net. Until one day it wasn't. Some people recognized it as just controversial bigoted/racist humor (such as the "Hitler did nothing wrong"-flavored Mountain Dew), others took it seriously and turned it into a lifestyle, and gave birth to the alt right.
It's the political manifestation of every troll board you've ever heard of, 4chan, 8chan, somethingawful, etc. I'm a 'chan veteran myself, I saw it all start.
My impression is that Something Awful was largely filled by people who saw the problems with 4chan "humor" and wanted nothing to do with it. But I could be misremembering.