Thread by @AlexandraErin

Steele dossier: Mostly corroborated, never actually debunked.
Russian interference theory: Validated by multiple investigations.
Mueller investigation: Established multiple instances of obstruction, uncovered serious crimes, established ties between Trump campaign and Russia.

But Trump has managed to tarnish the impression of these things and not just with his base by repeating over and over again that they are "hoaxes" and "scams".

Part of it is that people who know better decide to shift away from referencing them positively, to avoid the fight.

They think they're being strategic, they think that they're denying Trump an avenue of attack by abandoning the area where he has concentrated his fire.

They don't realize that in doing so, they're handing him victory. That's his goal.

And the thing is, this is the basic move of modern conservatism: get people to abandon ground by concentrating fire on it. Then when they deem that ground not worth the trouble of holding onto and abandon it, you just shift your fire to where they're standing now.

Want to get rid of marriage equality for gays but too many people are in favor of it?

Start with something that people know less about and that fewer people care about, something you can still make sound scary, like... trans kids.

If the people outside the conservative camp can be induced to abandon trans children to them, then they'll come for trans adults. Then from there gay people and anything outside of conservative-approved gender conformity. And so on, until everyone's back in the closet or dead.

Donald Trump is not doing anything new. He's just seeing what works in the overall conservative social/political project and doing it bigger, faster, and harder. He's a speedrunner for social engineering, exploiting every glitch and hack in the mind to get to the goal faster.

"A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts on its boots." is doubly true when the truth gets discouraged and goes back to bed.

I'm very sorry to say, but the fights worth having are not, by and large, the easy ones. The GOP has no incentive to go easy on anything that counts.

And it's harder still when the Mild Moderate Middle and the pundits who think they're in an elevated box looking down on the field instead of part of the game say, "This is what the GOP wants. When the Democrats take the bait and [fight for vulnerable human beings], they win."

And it's true that supporting universal healthcare when Trump has branded it "unlimited free health care for illegal aliens at your expense" will turn some people off. Why do we care if that happens? Because we want to win elections. Why? To institute policies we care about.

So if we abandon the policy positions that we care about in order to win elections... what's the point of winning?

This is how conservatives win, long-term. Part of the road to single party rule is making it so it doesn't matter when they lose because they still call the shots.

The Affordable Care Act is made up of largely Republican ideas and it was finalized in consultation with the Republican Party.

They still wouldn't vote for it and have fought to weaken and ultimately repeal it.

Merrick Garland* was picked for President Obama by "moderate" Republicans as a "compromise" candidate "they could vote for".

They didn't give him a hearing.

(*Corrected from previous version. Shouldn't thread before coffee kicks in.)

Again and again, Republicans get Democrats to come off their starting position and "meet them in the middle" before negotiations have even begun... and then they use that ceded ground to take more ground.

The ACA is easier to attack because of the compromises that went into it.

Because while some people are very grateful for the ACA, not all of those same people *love* it. Many people who are in favor of its protections wish they were stronger. A lot of people wish it went further.

Which helps properly worded polls show that it's unpopular.

When we cede battles before they begin... we're not just giving up that one thin crack of land. The ground we yield will be used to launch further attacks, and we'll give up more ground to avoid those, and so on, until finally we make a stand only to find the enemy surrounds us.

This phenomenon... it's also part of how Donald Trump has won the total obedience of the Republican Party. He's forced them to "pick their battles" and "keep their powder dry" and "not get distracted", the same way they're used to doing to the Democrats.

Each time his right-leaning critics and doubters and the ones who wish he would go slower or be less vulgar or stop undermining their power in Congress decide not to fight him, they yield ground that he will use to his advantage in the next round.

Anyway. If you got anything out of this thread, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter, where I can do longer and more nuanced political analysis (among other things).

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