Some might consider record low unemployment, record stock market values, relative peace and prosperity to be the actual benchmarks of a successful Presidency.

But tweets or whatever.

Stock market means little to a lot.

It and the rest were in the works.

But, hey, having a hateful, corrupt president. Whatever.

n/t

This country needs two functioning political parties. Right now we have one. It's (way past) time for Republicans to put country over party (although it's not even their party any longer; it's been hijacked by Trump) and do something about it.
Winning reelection is not the most important thing in the world.

has it not occurred to anyone that potus & the GOP are, in fact, working more-or-less as intended for their primary & secondary constituents: capital & a plurality of reactionary proles?

the confluence of capitalism, evangelical christianity and nationalism is nothing less than an apocalyptic death cult. that doesn’t mean the GOP “isn’t functioning” or that the GOP will be “forever damaged”

the GOP is successful at politics because they understand politics is a struggle over power & resources, not a sorkin-esque morality play about civic virtue

"Death cult" is a fairly ironic accusation coming from an adherent to a philosophy that killed hundreds of millions of people in the last century and is currently working it's magic in Venezuela, North Korea and probably other places I'm forgetting at the moment.

But of course Real Socialism™ hasn't been tried, and won't have been until it works.

I think a moderate percentage of Republican politicians are true believers. They approve of Trump because he's been saying things they've been thinking for years. I would guess around thirty to forty percent.

The rest are waiting for an opportunity to get Trump to resign. He resigns, gets pardoned, and it's considered a win for Republicans in the long term.

This is my nightmare scenario.

Eventually tangible evidence will be presented that President Trump committed an impeachable action. Maybe a recording, maybe a transcript, heck maybe his tax returns depending on how the Supreme Court leans on that on. So with a little bit of focus it should be evident that President Trump will be impeached and run out of office. Except upper rank Republicans won't let that happen. Right in the opening weeks after the document is published President Trump will be convinced that it would be in his best interest if he resigned. Trump agrees and departure speech will focus on deflection. He'll say something along the lines of "Democrats won't let me due my presidential duties so it's in the best interest of the country if I resign and allow President Pence to continue the great task of making America great again." Pence comes out and gives Trump a big ol' hug, because people love hugs, and pardons Trump stating a desire to heal the division that plague America.

So in this possible scenario what are we left with? Pence agrees with Trump supporters on a lot of key issues and beliefs but has none of baggage of Trump. At least that I'm aware of anyway. So if Democrats try to somehow paint him Trump he can shrug it off and say "Well I'm not Trump you need to debate me on the issues." Trump supporters will be the first wild card in that some of them will be convinced that Trump was driven out by a super secret government organization that both Democrats and Republicans are a part of. I think most would take Pence at his word but I'm not sure how big of a difference that would be.

Second wild card would be Democrats. I think a portion of liberals and Democrats are driven by getting Trump out of office. If Trump were to be replaced by Pence I'm not sure how many would be driven to vote Pence out.

So long post short, I think a lot of Republicans are just waiting for Trump to screw up so bad that they can kick him out and take advantage of a clean as a whistle Pence.

Hopefully I'm grasping at straws here, because a emboldened Pence presidency scares me, but to quote several hot dog space cadets....I have a bad feeling about this.

I have been following Dr Heather Cox Richardson's posts on Facebook, but she produces a newsletter that you can subscribe to as well. She is a professor of political history at Boston College, a writer of history books and a political commentator (The Guardian has carried several of her opinion pieces). I highly recommend her daily analysis of our current political mess. Today's post (Nov 17) is very informative about Roger Stone's successful meddling into our elections from the Nixon presidency up until now. Her posts are by subscription (free) at heathercoxrichardson@substack.com. Reading her posts helps to make some sense of our current predicament, as she beautifully connects the dots.

Guess who wrote this:

"In 13 months, all congressional Republicans who have not defended Congress by exercising “the constitutional rights of the place” should be defeated. If congressional Republicans continue their genuflections at Trump’s altar, the appropriate 2020 outcome will be a Republican thrashing so severe — losing the House, the Senate and the electoral votes of, say, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and even Texas — that even this party of slow-learning careerists might notice the hazards of tethering their careers to a downward-spiraling scofflaw."

(link...)

Republicans gerrymandered themselves into this problem. They are now riding the tiger of their own making. All those 'safe' House (and state legislature) districts they created are (mostly) safe from the Democrats, sure. When they created them, they were safe seats for conservatives. Then Trump came along and co-opted their constituency for Trumpism, which is not conservatism. (Who cares about deficits, military alliances, Russian aggression, or the dignity of the Office of the President anymore? ...among other things that used to be bedrock conservative Republicanism.)

Trump's polling average of approval ratings keeps plodding along in the low 40s. This is pathetic, from a historical perspective. He's the only President since they started tracking these things with Truman who has gotten this far into his term without ever cracking 50% approval. It's at 41.3% right now. The problem for Republicans? That pathetic approval rating is held up almost entirely by Republican voters, which means that tracking in the low 40s nationally translates into 80+% approval in those gerrymandered districts.

Had Republicans not put everything into gerrymandering their seats, there would actually be lots of competitive seats across the country held by Republicans, and they would be able to vote their conscience and impeach Trump. Back in their districts, they'd hold their seats in the primaries, because voters would know nominating a Trumpist wack-a-doodle would only hand the seat over to whatever Democrat is running. Then they'd have a chance to hold the seat against the Democrat, because of course they did the right thing and voted to impeach Trump.

Instead, they're going to be eaten by an orange tiger with a bad comb-over.