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'Picked a bad candidate': Conservative pops MAGA's bubble about Trump

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-bad-candidate/

The Republican Party cannot blame the media's positive reaction to Vice President Kamala Harris for the downturn in their fortunes, wrote National Review executive editor Mark Antonio Wright. Rather, their problem begins with the fact that they "picked a bad candidate" to lead the ticket.The Nationa...

'Picked a bad candidate': Conservative pops MAGA's bubble about Trump

102 comments

dogsnest

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solidgrue

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That reminds me of an old joke.

A traitor, a rapist and a convicted felon walk into the bar, and the bartender says, "Good Evening, Mr. Trump!"

NegativeInf

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What's funny about that is that trump doesn't drink. Which is odd, because he acts like he's pickled half the time.

Dagwood222

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From media reports he abstains from alcohol because his brother died of alcoholism. That hasn't stopped him from promoting Trump vodka.

me66

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I think him not drinking is the only reason we are exposed to him at all. If he was a drinker, he would be a raging alcoholic, unable to even stand up.

Coelacanth

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Him not drinking is unironically probably the only reason he's still alive despite his lifestyle and diet.

solsangraal

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the joke is that trump doesn't drink

ThePowerOfGeek

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"Trump isn’t losing because Kamala Harris is being hyped by the press and fluffed up to kingdom come. He isn’t losing because the press is being unfair to him. He’s losing because he’s a weak, unpopular, undisciplined candidate running at the head of a weak, minority electoral coalition. That’s the truth, whether anyone wants to hear it or not," Wright concluded.

Damn. The National Review is not pulling its punches on Trump.

grue

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Yes they are. They forgot to call him a rapist, felon, traitor, and wanna-be dictator.

InternetUser2012

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34 felonies, dementia, and weird.

paf0

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All of that can be unfortunately explained away by MAGA. This hits them in the only place they care about, the ballot box.

KillingTimeItself

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i thought that came with the ticket, i didn't realize you had to call that in with the ticket.

ShaggySnacks

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Those all sound like criteria to be a Republican

dirthawker0

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Yeah, but they're also busy trashing Kamala too.

"Is Harris an ideal candidate? Is she an incredibly talented orator? Is she deft on her feet and nimble in debate? Is she a famous wonk? Does she have a long track record of competence at the state and federal level? Has she been scrutinized by a tough no-nonsense press and come out stronger on the other side?" wrote Wright. "No, of course not — but she’s an alternative to Trump/Biden, and that’s probably going to be enough."

ThePowerOfGeek

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True, but that goes without saying. They will always put the Democrat candidate down, no matter how good or bad they are. As would the devoted liberal media always put down the GOP candidate.

Grandwolf319

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Yeah, the writing is on the wall enough for them to abandon the fascist ship.

Grandwolf319

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I’ll just leave this here

nifty

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Platform wise some of them are republican as we know them now even if their circles are blue. I think Clinton and Carter are what we’d consider current democrats

UnderpantsWeevil

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The "Lost popular vote" angle is only going to get worse over time. As the Senate/EC gets more and more comically lopsided in popular representation and climate change eats into the bigger Gulf Coast states, you're going to see people winning the White House with 10-15M popular vote deficits in the next few decades.

California alone constitutes more than 12% of the total population but less than 10% of the EC.

chaogomu

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Carter was pre-Reagan. This was before the neoliberals took over the Democratic Party.

Clinton mostly accepted Republican framing of the economy, that taxes on the rich need to be low for... Reasons.

The main argument of the neoliberals is that while conservatives are "right" about a bunch of their policies and shit, they're just bad at running everything.

Carter was before that shit. Back when we said that conservative policy was heartless and evil.

Some in the Democratic Party are coming back to this simple idea.

Doom

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how does Carter suck

SmilingSolaris

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The chart is labeled

Doom

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"Presidential Circles of Suck"

Presidents that sucked. So how did Carter suck? Losing his second term means he sucks? No.

So again, how does Carter suck?

SmilingSolaris

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Is this bait? Like, are you trolling? Because I didn't make the chart. You clearly understand the chart. You just want to start a fight over the title of the chart? It's a silly name for a funny chart. Calm down bruv.

Doom

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Are you special needs? None of that happened

jordanlund

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Removed, civility.

homicidalrobot

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What a question to ask when you're the one who didn't read the clearly labeled graphic.

Doom

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Are you people actually insane?

Please indicate where it explains Carter was a bad president

SmilingSolaris

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Gotcha

chiliedogg

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It's saying he was voted out of office.

magnetosphere

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"Trump's weakness only remained hidden for much of this year because…

Only for “much of this year”? Are you kidding me?

His many, many flaws were/are invisible to his selectively blind cult members. Those people were, however, loud and obnoxious enough to force their opinion on the weak Republican Party, and the party was too ineffectual to come up with an alternative. Boo fucking hoo.

Kushan

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His flaws aren't invisible to his cult members, they're why they follow him in the first place.

If He can a be racist, bigoted piece of shit that can do no wrong then they can be racist, bigoted pieces of shit that can do no wrong.

His sexism justifies their sexism. His constant grifting justifies their constant grifting.

But above all else, in my humble opinion, is that he's an absolute fucking moron that likes to think he's the smartest person in the room. And when you're an absolute fucking moron that doesn't understand how pronouns work or why masks were important or anything like that, well that's okay because actually you know better because you're smart, you're the smartest guy in the room, you know better than all those experts, just like Trump.

CleoTheWizard

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The fact that the party was basically forced to run him again just tells me that the republicans are in big trouble after Trump leaves. Their voter base is declining and they don’t have another populist to take his place.

So their options after this are either to try and get another populist and push trash candidates over the line, which won’t work. Or they can do the right thing and give up on their social positions against minorities and abortion. The outcome of the first option is they lose a lot of elections, the outcome of the second option of changing positions is to split the party. I just don’t know how they move forward when Trump loses.

ChickenLadyLovesLife

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Their voter base is declining

This has been true for literally decades and it hasn't stopped them yet. When you can gerrymander, suppress voters, take advantage of the Electoral College, and pack the Supreme Court with cronies, you don't really care about demographics.

CleoTheWizard

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Well sure, but there is a critical point at which they can’t use those to compensate anymore and that point is already passed them I think. That’s why you’re seeing them try to steal elections, they know there is no legitimate way to win them now. So unless democrats do some really stupid things, they may not have the population to gain the minority of votes they need to keep power.

ChickenLadyLovesLife

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Quite arguably, they stole the Presidential elections in both 2000 and 2016. 2000 was aided and abetted by the Supreme Court (hence "pack the Supreme Court with cronies"), while 2016 was aided and abetted by Putin and the Russians - at least that shit is new in the Republican playbook.

aesthelete

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Gerrymandering is also only so effective. If enough people move or die you're stuck running a radical right candidate in a newly moderate district.

IchNichtenLichten

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Bad candidate, bad businessman, bad father, bad husband ... it's almost impressive how much he sucks.

linearchaos

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And still at 47% polls.

This country has some serious shit wrong with it

KillingTimeItself

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this is the most confusing thing to me, why are so many people still voting for him?

i swear the RNC could run a fucking rock they found on the road as a candidate and it would get 40% of the votes.

Raiderkev

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Brainwashed is all I can say. I run in some circles with conservative folks, and you can point out every reason why trump is a shit show, and you're still gonna get "well uh bengazi er that pizza place uh Hunter Biden's laptop. They hear what they want to hear, they don't dig for the truth, and they buy any of the shit fox news shovels in their mouth.

KillingTimeItself

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yeah idk it's fucking depressing that i have to exist around people like this. Meanwhile socially and economically i'm treated worse just for being on the fringes of socialization. Meanwhile i'm also not a literal fascist, but apparently that's not good enough.

gotta love society i guess.

KaTaRaNaGa

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I imagine for some of those folks being a part of a group that demands nothing other than your agreement is better than belonging to a group demanding a truthful relationship to the facts and their impact.

Boddhisatva

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When reading your list my mind went to 'bad cellmate' and I suddenly realized that if Trump were ever convicted, he would have a cell mate. Can you imagine the sheer horror at finding out you would be spending years locked in a cage with Trump?

bamboo

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Trump has been convicted, 34 times, actually. Will he go to prison is the question. If he does, I doubt he'd have a cellmate. He'll probably be in a Four Seasons version of prison.

HWK_290

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Four Seasons Total Landscaping and Minimum Security Prison (TM)

IchNichtenLichten

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Can you imagine the sheer horror at finding out you would be spending years locked in a cage with Trump?

Oh, it wouldn't be years. I'll take the extra time in exchange for some peace and quiet.

DickFiasco

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I'd purposely start some shit to try to get moved to solitary confinement.

ChickenLadyLovesLife

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If Trump ever faces real prison time (at age 78+), he'll flee to Russia or Saudi Arabia.

InternetUser2012

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It really is. Is there a bigger loser in history? I mean, he fucking bankrupted a casino during the casino boom. Then got bailed out by a coal baron he appointed to secretary of commerce. Coincidence I'm sure...

Grandwolf319

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Your on to something, he does have the best worse record:

presidential circle of suck

Icing on the cake is that he might “lose third term” for first time ever (not 100% if that hasn’t been done before though)

ChickenLadyLovesLife

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You're conveniently leaving out what he's good at: being a Russian and Saudi asset.

Rentlar

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"The GOP electoral coalition is the smaller, weaker coalition. It’s lost the popular vote seven out of nine times in my lifetime (I’m 36). It has lost the Electoral College three out of the last four cycles. Conservatives might not be very eager to hear this, but 'We the People' are mostly Democrats," Wright continued.

So much for calling themselves the Silent Majority.

Of course they can still win, the way they are looking at now is to cheat!

Commiunism

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I don't think this is a good thing. While the current form of conservatism was kind of started by Trump via whatever horrible things he was saying, it's a pandora's box that was opened and will probably never be closed again as long as there's an audience to the talking points. If Trump were to become effectively disowned by conservatives, they're likely going to replace him with someone even worse (someone like Mike Johnson or any other christian fundamentalist) which is the true horror.

Also remember - all this talk from conservatives about Trump being a "bad candidate" is not because his policies or project 2025 are bad, it's only because he's no longer that popular.

tired_n_bored

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But I feel like Trump has both narcissism and charisma which make people believe what he says.

If Johnson had to take over, he'd spit lies and christofascist stuff but I doubt people would see him as "our new Jesus" as MAGA people see Trump. Idk if I explained myself clearly

Grandwolf319

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Hahaha, yeah let them try.

The thing is, trump was a unique breed of asshole, he has no shame, he said the quiet part out loud because there was no doubt in his mind that he is doing something wrong.

GOP has never had an alternative to that, it’s actually why he became president. He brought a useful energy that no one else could produce.

It’s just how cults of personality work, they die with the figurehead until someone else could match or surpass that energy.

orcrist

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It's not quite that simple, though. Trump took control of the party, and the people who were in control before him or who wish they were in control now, those people might not be happy with their loss of personal power.

They also know, as we know, that being overtly racist and sexist is probably not going to win the hearts of the majority of Americans. In the past and today, many conservative candidates have pushed racist and sexist policies but they've been less conspicuous about doing so, and that let them maintain some semblance of decency to some percent of the voting population. With Trump or anyone of his style at the helm, it's much harder for people to deny the horror.

Finally, it's certainly true that many conservative politicians don't agree with some aspects of Project 2025. The problem they have had in the Trump cult era is that they didn't dare say anything that would go against their fearless leader.

Having written all of that, Republicans who are only finally speaking out now are showing us that they prioritized personal political survival over everything else, and I don't have much respect for that.

bluemellophone

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Let them replace Trump with somebody even worse. They will get beat at the ballot box too.

GreenPlasticSushiGrass

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"Is Harris an ideal candidate? Is she an incredibly talented orator? Is she deft on her feet and nimble in debate? Is she a famous wonk? Does she have a long track record of competence at the state and federal level? Has she been scrutinized by a tough no-nonsense press and come out stronger on the other side?" wrote Wright. "No, of course not — but she’s an alternative to Trump/Biden, and that’s probably going to be enough."

Hard disagree.

Probably. 2. Yes. 3. Yes. 4. Yes, but I wouldn't consider her famous for it. 5. Yes. 6. We'd have to have a no-nonsense press before I could answer that. 7. Yes, but she's much more.

aesthelete

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Gore and Hilary Clinton were famously policy wonks and both lost.

I guess that's why this Republican douche wants Harris to be in the same category.

ChickenLadyLovesLife

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FWIW the most famous wonk in decades was Al Gore, and Karl Rove managed to turn that into a negative by getting people to believe he claimed to have "invented the Internet".

psycho_driver

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We picked a guy who has lost two straight elections to run in a third election? Yeah, that tracks.

doggle

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lost two straight elections

He only lost one. Unless this is some veiled commentary about the illegitimacy of the electoral college

psycho_driver

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2016 election by popular vote:

Trump - 62,984,828 Clinton - 65,853,514

Trump won the birth lottery. Ever since then he's been a big fat loser.

ech

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Then say he lost the vote. He very evidently won the election.

psycho_driver

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Nah. As far as I'm concerned he lost the election and got into office on a technicality.

ech

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The "technicality" is the rules of US elections. You can dislike it and want it to change, but acting like he didn't win - you're behaving just like him.

mriormro

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That's not how things work...

the_post_of_tom_joad

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hahahaha just edit the first post and admit it cmon it's ok to misspeak

Chocrates

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Looks like yeah it's EC stuff. I agree that the Electoral College seems antiquated and disenfranchises voters, but it is the law and fucking Trump was our President for 4 long years.

TropicalDingdong

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Just a classic Democratic apologist fever dream/ trope.

forrgott

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Yup, those darn Democrats and their facts! How dare they have evidence to back up their claims?!

Orange weirdo never had the support of the people, and his entire time in office was not only illegitimate, it's downright embarrassing.

MyFairJulia

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You really don't wanna know how bad he does at queer elections. The only reason he gets a non-zero amount are the log cabin republicans. These sisters lower their standards and say they're not like other gays.

Imgonnatrythis

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"Republican Party is a minority coalition that picked a very unpopular 78-year-old retread as its candidate"

Is it possible to read this and not read as "retard"? I cant for the life of me.

jordanlund

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Hey, some people can't afford 4 brand new tires all at once. They can't help it if they don't have the money.

Sho

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May they never recover.

luciferofastora

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May the moderate Democracts become the right end of the Window, so that actually progressive parties can spring up on their left wing.

Adderbox76

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Even Fox News is hanging up on him when gets ranting during his regular Fox and Friends morning call.

nifty

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The GOP electoral coalition is the smaller, weaker coalition. It’s lost the popular vote seven out of nine times in my lifetime (I’m 36). It has lost the Electoral College three out of the last four cycles. Conservatives might not be very eager to hear this, but 'We the People' are mostly Democrats," Wright continued.

So you’re saying, the republicans are a minority. So maybe they need some inclusion and equity so people can appreciate the diverse opinion they bring to the table. So basically, conservatives and republicans need DEI 🤔

All that remains, he said, is for Republicans to "stop whining" and try to create a stronger coalition — which so far there is no indication they are trying to do.

And how will they do that? Hint, joining with Nazis or white supremacists isn’t necessary. The commoners want more than bread and circuses, and blood or bloodlust is a poor substitute. Conservatism as a platform needs to become less disingenuous and hypocritical. The republicans are the party of the oligarchs, and by definition that will always fail a democracy.

solstice

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That's such a great angle, calling all republican presidents DEI hires from the electoral college lol

DandomRude

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I think the Conservatives had little choice left. The extreme forces in this party without any values have been on the rise since at least the Tea Party movement. Even then, they decided to focus on extremism, racism and pretty much every other "ism" there is - just because this made it possible to hide their actual political agenda behind that, which is - of course - exclusively in the interests of a wealthy minority. Trump is simply the consequence of that decision. Since his presidency, he has managed to take over that party completely. While doing so it surely has played into his hands that the conservatives are so spineless and power-oriented that there was hardly anyone to counter Trump. Now he has already filled all the key positions with family members or minions who are dependent on him. I don't think that there is a GOP anymore; just the Trump cult that's left of it. The good thing about all this: If Trump loses the election, the GOP is probably finished.

ChickenLadyLovesLife

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The extreme forces in this party without any values have been on the rise since at least ~~the Tea Party movement~~ 1980.

DandomRude

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It's probably true that Reagan and his cronies started this - especially with their instrumentalization of supposedly "Christian values". But I'm referring more to the direction of "politicians" who no longer compromise at all if it doesn't serve their personal power interests. It seems to me that this has only become really popular among conservatives since the Tea Party movement. Could be wrong tho.

barsquid

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You are correct that it is kinda recent but it might be earlier than you thought.

https://www.vox.com/2015/4/23/8485443/polarization-congress-visualization

DandomRude

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TIL, thanks. Data is beautiful even if it's just descriptive like in this case. It's good to know how the representatives voted even if that cool graph does not say why.

beebarfbadger

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Picked two bad candidates.

jaemo

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You're a bad egg, Vance! Let's pray.

Hosanna! Praise Rang Dipkin!

exanime

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Bad candidates, bad policies, bad justifications, bad faith... The list goes on

dudinax

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He's not even legally allowed to hold office.

Stovetop

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He is able to be elected president again, as (for better or worse) being a convicted felon is not one of the disqualifying criteria for that office.

Several US states invoked the 14th Amendment as grounds to disqualify him, but the Republican-controlled Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that only the US Congress has the authority to make that determination. Which, divided as Congress is right now, could never happen.

dudinax

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It's an incorrect ruling. States have always been the judges of legal qualification for office.

Congress has it's own method to disqualify someone: impeachment.

Stovetop

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I agree, but unfortunately the Supreme Court's word is (literally) law. There is no avenue to contest that short of passing another amendment with more teeth than the 14th, or waiting for a less-biased court to re-evaluate the ruling.

just_another_person

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He is. You can be a convicted felon and still hold office.

dudinax

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You can't lead an insurrection after taking an oath of office and still hold office.

just_another_person

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Seems there is a gap there

KazuyaDarklight

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One of those loopholes born of the founding fathers just never expecting us to be that stupid. A constitutional "this is why we have dumb warnings on the box" moment if you will.

grue

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No, that was a deliberate choice in order to prevent people in power from being able to silence their political opponents by locking them up on trumped-up charges. (See e.g. Alexei Navalny)

The real reason Trump shouldn't be eligible to hold office is because of his coup attempt and the Insurrection Clause, not his 34 felony convictions.

Stovetop

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Eugene Debs is also a good example from within the US.

Blackmist

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Did they actually have a good one? Since 2015 or so they've just pivoted to pure crazies and people sticking their tongues up crazy's arseholes.

Chocrates

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Surprisingly cogent argument from a conservative publication.

MediaBiasFactChecker

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