As emotionally illiterate as @IainDale is on Trump, he is also revealing. He directly compares progressives having won, failing to reach out to Trump voters, to Remainers having lost, failing to reach out to Brexiters. So, win or lose, it is up to progressives to show grace.
And I say 'emotionally illiterate', because he simply fails to understand - or even recognise - the *emotional impact* of having Trump in charge of the US for many women, many PoC, migrants, LGBT people etc. The sense of peril many felt versus the sense of relief they feel now.
Well, I'm sorry if we can't all instantly be as gracious as this. Give us a few days.
The whole "Democrats must be gracious to Trump supporters" basically reminds me of the time a headmaster asked me to "shake hands" with the bully that had made every day of the previous six years hell for me and, when I refused, suspended me.
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There’s a widely held belief that, if these voting cases get to the Supreme Court, all the people Trump appointed will come good and just give him the decisions he needs to win the election. I think that’s quite a bad take, for two reasons: 1/4
First, the common strand between the people Trump appointed is that they oppose Supreme Court interference in state laws. Every decision they’re looking to reverse hinges on this “originalist” constitutional view that SCoTUS should stay out of state legislation. 2/4
Second, Trump has very little to offer them and very little to threaten them with. He’s appointed them. They’re there for life. In some cases, they have decades of a judicial career ahead of them. They will not trash their reputation to do Trump any favours. 3/4
Once you're over the HOW-DARE-HE hump of "many people live on 1/20th of that" - a perfectly legitimate reaction, to be clear - a more interesting question emerges: Who would brief this story to the Times? 1/3
Seems too detailed to be fabricated; more likely it comes from a source genuinely close to the PM. It's definitely not succession planning. That ground is covered by the honourable discharge narrative "his health has not recovered" stories. This shows him in an awful light. 2/3
It's also not a "dead cat". Much of the media corps is already focused on his poor performance (full of 'insider' briefing). This story adds fuel to that fire rather than distracts from it. It's intended to wound him, to tip him over as he teeters.
The other dimension to the A-Levels fiasco is that it shows astoundingly poor political judgment. Even to the most casual observer it's been blindingly obvious for days that the gov't position was untenable. But - Classic Dom - his dislike of teachers made it a blind spot. 1/4
Choosing to grind it out has done the Johnson administration significant and lasting damage. Not only do they have every newspaper, usually cheer-leading for them, calling them "dunces", but they have managed to incite a backbench MP's rebellion, during recess - not easy! 2/4
Voting records show backbench rebellions are habit-forming. Once an MP has gone against the front bench, especially successfully, they're much more likely to do so again. Incidents like this, take the shine off No.10; they damage the gov't's glamour spell over their new MPs. 3/4
"Equally, the spreading of disinformation is not necessarily aimed at influencing any individual outcome; it can simply have broad objectives around creating an atmosphere of distrust or otherwise fracturing society."
This can result in a "general poisoning of the political narrative in the West by fomenting political extremism and ‘wedge issues’, and by the ‘astroturfing’ of Western public opinion; and general discrediting of the West."