He got 74 million bc of huge increase in voter access, which was only 47% of the vote. He lost by 7 m voters to Biden (& even the least likable Dem nominee in recent history got 5M more votes than him). He lost the race to a guy that barely campaigned.
You can take some policy and arguments from him to appeal to some of the new voters he brought in (though many were simply alienated by Dems move to the far left), but he as a person is toxic to any future electoral success.
And most of his voters, except for a very small minority of cultists, will have no issue with that once they realize he's a loser politician that threw them under the bus. And obsessing just about keeping those cultists will cost you the rest.
This has seriously become like wanting to get credit for your team scoring 140 points in an NBA game where 5 additional minutes were added to each quarter when you still lost by 20.
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People need to understand how conspiracies become mainstreamed. All it takes is someone with a platform and trusted audience to tell them it's true.
That's all it takes for good people to believe it. Those who spread that conspiracy are betraying the people who trust them.
An example: my parents asked me if there was any truth to the claims that the election was stolen via massive voter fraud. I told them there wasn't.
As they trust me, they no longer believed it. But most Trump supporters didn't have anyone they trust telling them the truth.
Part of that is because the press had no credibility with those people (& that lack of credibility was earned). The other part of it is that many of the people who did instead promoted, or at least ignored, those lies.
Disgusting to watch. You can't legitimately claim to be supportive of police or against the attempts to smear/attack police from the left, and then remain silent about this.
This is allegedly an image from the attack that led to officer Sicknick's death.
Here is the video of the attack on Officer Sicknick. You can see them drag him into the crowd (0:20) and then beat him while he is on the ground unconscious. If you can help identify any of these people, pls contact authorities:
To be clear: Trump/allies spent months lying to supporters w false claims about the election being stolen. Then he summoned his most extreme supporters to D.C. on Jan 6th. Then he lied to those people and told them Pence/R's in Congress can unilaterally make him the winner. 1/2
Then Trump told that angry mob to be "strong," told them they can't allow the "steal" and directed them to go to the Capitol. He created that situation, and then made it worse.
And as it blew up, he just repeated the same lies that caused the mob.
Those are the facts.
We can argue about policies, speech, double standards etc., but what happened on Wednesday was one of the most shameful events in recent American history and Donald Trump's complicity in it is not up for debate.
Trump BARELY won one race against the least likable Dem nominee in recent history while losing the popular vote.
He attracted some new working-class voters to Republicans, but also alienated a ton of suburban voters with his antics.
More importantly, those who tried to imitate him did terribly. It's really indisputable that Republicans did significantly better in elections 2010-2014 than 2016-2020. The Republicans who won managed weren't the ones that tried to copy Trump.
As Cotton points out, Congress has no role in deciding elections, selecting electors, or adjudicating election disputes. Pretending otherwise is just dangerous abuse that will further erode our system of Constitutional government.
Seriously have to respect Cotton for this. The long-term consequences and limits on Congress' role he cites are apparent and known to other politicians that are instead choosing to ignore them for personal political gain.
Since it's obvious certain people have been misinforming others: There is no Congressional role that allows them to object to properly certified electoral votes. Those proposing to vote no on January 6th are clearly exceeding the Constitutional and statutory limits.