Retreat! Trump Predictably Abandons Shutdown Threat

9 thoughts on “Retreat! Trump Predictably Abandons Shutdown Threat”

1. With the election almost two years away do you think anyone outside of our political nerd bubble cares about how Gardner supported or did not support Trump now?

   Gardner is terrible, but his level of awfulness is priced in. He's done this before and the polls reflect this. Unless he does something that starts offending his Republican base he's not going to get more unpopular than he already is right now. Fortunately for him (and unfortunately for the Republic) his party does not care. The Republican cult will just keep on supporting whoever has an R next to their name because to admit that they've been had by a bunch of con men would be more painful than a little doublethink.

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   1. Gardner is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.  There are many MAGAts who don't think Gardner's pure enough.  Yeah, they might vote for him in the end, but he will deal with a larger electorate that hates Trump and will vote him down because of his allegiance to Trump.  His best hopes, is a deeply flawed Dem nominee, or Dem enthusiasm diminishing by Fall, 2020.  The former could happen, but the latter is unlikely.

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      1. Yes, damned if he does and damned if the does not, but is he any more damned than he was last week? He is not. Nothing has changed.

         If the proud know nothings get the nod from their great leader that Gardner is their guy they'll line up and say, "We have always supported Gardner. We never disliked him, saying otherwise is Fake News(tm). We have always been at war with East Asia."

         He has not, by supporting the cult, damaged himself any more because he's not broken with the cult in any memorable way.

         Conversely he has also not done anything worse than he already has in the eyes of the rest of the voting public. It is exactly like the presidents approval ratings. He keeps on trading in the same disliked band without any additional scandal moving it much in either direction.

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         1. At this point, I would say, if he goes against Trump, he might lose som MAGAts.  If he stays with Trump he will completely alienate everyone who doesn't like Trump and give them incentive and enthusiasm to vote him out.

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            1. And this is a change from last week or two weeks ago, how? Nobody outside the political nerdosphere is paying attention to the shutdown threats and the wall beyond it reconfirming their opinions. If people were polled in 2020 how many of them do you think will know if Gardner did or did not support the shutdown threat almost two years before?

               At most this will be part of an ad saying something like, “Gardner voted to support the president 97% of the time.”

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               1. I don't expect anything to change now.  I expect these issues to surface during 2020, if not in the primary, for sure in the general election.

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   2. True.

      But, could Smiling Cory™ be forced into a primary? Why not have a dark-money group fund a challenger from the right? Tom Steyer could do something useful with his money.

      In the meantime, someone needs to run ads (starting now) positioning Cory as a "Medicare thief".

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      1. Ads now would be wasted effort. The public's memory is about 15 seconds.

         Yes, someone could challenge him from the right. Someone could also challenge him from the middle. SETI could discover aliens tomorrow. Anything could happen! What’s your evidence that anyone will credibly challenge him?

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2. Can’t understand why Twoscoops even imagined Putin would ever allow the shutting down of any government that’s been so good to him??!!

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