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4 Jan, 4 tweets, 2 min read
It's forgotten now, but this "ill-advised-but-not-illegal" view is the precise reaction Republicans had to the Ukraine call, even late in impeachment. Everyone gets so excited to see Republicans criticize Trump they keep falling for the same sucker lines
You can already see The Call - a president explicitly trying to overturn an election by asking for fraud! - receding into DC's infinite capacity for normalization. It's just Trump being Trump, you know? It would never succeed. The president was just speaking his mind. Etc. etc.
Seriously, there's a symbiotic relationship between the savvier-than-thou DC power class, which feels most comfortable arguing that nothing ever matters, and far-right conservativism, which leans on that instinct to argue for outrageous elite impunity
It's treated as self-evidently ridiculous that we might try to impose consequence on a president for TRYING TO FRAUDULENTLY STEAL AN ELECTION, and it only works because so many people in DC are primed to believe everything in DC is just a game, in the end

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Will Stancil Profile picture
6 Jan
Okay, so, the races are close, it's probably impossible to unpack what made the difference.

HOWEVER: in almost every respect, the campaigns that Warnock and Ossoff ran were closer to what progressives counseled than what moderates have counseled.
1. They very aggressively attacked their opponents' corruption and scandalous misbehavior at every available opportunity.
2. They campaigned heavily on bold promises of direct financial aid - literally just thousands of dollars coming as a check in the mail.
3. Trump loomed large in the race. Of course, this was his own doing, rather than a strategic choice, but notable given that they underperformed Trump in November.
4. They did NOT engage in the kind of Clintonite triangulation that political wise men always advise for red states.
Read 8 tweets
Will Stancil Profile picture
5 Jan
The last four years have made it clear to me that “providing justice” is a critical, core function of government, and that includes retributive justice to the evil and corrupt. That’s why anti-corruption has a broad political appeal.
This represents a political opportunity for liberals, too. Liberals struggle to appeal to people are attracted to rules, authority, retributive justice. Anti-corruption allows liberals to sell themselves to the law-and-order crowd, to be hardliners for once.
I’ve said it for years, but there ought to be an Anti-Corruption Caucus in Congress, dedicating to finding crooks in government and business and simply making their lives as miserable as possible. The appeal goes beyond left-right.
Read 5 tweets
Will Stancil Profile picture
4 Jan
Impeachment didn't "backfire"
It's taken as an article of faith among the Pelosi faithful that impeachment was a political disaster of some kind, but there's no evidence of that. Trump got a short approval boost post-acquittal, that's it.
During the actual impeachment proceedings it was benefiting Democrats, if anything. Early on, even GOP electeds seem to be wavering in their support of Trump a little, but they quickly fell back in line once Dems signaled their intent to investigate no further
Read 6 tweets
Will Stancil Profile picture
3 Jan
If the American political world has one fatal flaw, an underlying defect that has brought the whole US state to the brink of ruin, it's that, for various reasons, it's become verboten to ever question someone's underlying motives, no matter how transparently they're playing you
Republicans have realized they can do everything from pretending to find Donald Trump a great statesman, to voting to reverse an election based on fraud allegations they won't even describe, and media, and too often even Democrats, will treat them as if their views are sincere
So American politics has become a competition to see who can tell the most brazen and audacious lies, and the liars face no penalty for the transparent falsehoods they tell. In fact, it's the people who are outraged at the lying who are penalized, as partisan or uncivil
Read 5 tweets
Will Stancil Profile picture
2 Jan
I mean, they should obviously be arrested and tried as traitors
Sorry but like, what are you supposed to do with this? "Oh it's cool, attempting to effect the overthrow of constitutional government is just part of constitutional government, that's just free speech"
Human beings have a lot of experience with this particular problem and the solution isn't to change the offending party's mind by convincing him of the rightness of your case
Read 5 tweets
Will Stancil Profile picture
10 Dec 20
Think people are underrating the possibility that the SCOTUS takes up this case, and holds that the original intent is that state legislatures DO have plenary authority over allocation of electors. That doesn’t overturn this election but sets the stage for a future GOP takeover.
It would be hard or impossible for a state legislature to reassign electors this year without it being perceived as an outright coup. But if the Supreme Court changes the law, the DC political and media class will spend a few years treating this as just a new election twist.
That means, by the time 2024 rolls around, the previously unthinkable idea that a state would simply reassign its electors would be normalized, just like so many of Trump’s abuses were. Horse race coverage would simply reorient to PA legislative stuff - new rules, same game.
Read 5 tweets

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