I don't think Trump is the only one who could do it. However, I think that Republicans fundamentally don't understand what it was about the Trump formula that worked, so they are unlikely to replicate his appeal anytime soon.
Trump's formula is entirely about personality, not policy. He was vague and flexible on his political beliefs.
What made Trump work was, he was an angry idiot that every angry idiot in America could see themselves in.
Trump spent his life watching the same right-wing anger porn that all his fans did.
So when he spoke, yes mainly about race but also about all kinds of random uninformed conspiracy theories, millions of low-frequency voters thought, FINALLY someone who GETS what I'm mad about.
The problem is that most Republicans in elected office know that stuff is all bullshit and, while they pander to it, they do so in a coded, pseudo-intellectual way. And that just doesn't appeal to these voters the same way.
Republicans are now saying, we need someone who has Trump's policies but tweets less and doesn't act like a total idiot.
Wrong. The typical infrequent Trump voter or Obama-Trump voter was meh on his policies. They liked how he blew up normal politics by acting like a total ass.
If you take Trump's policies and strip away all his bluster and bullying and tweeting and infantile behavior, you're left with a politician like Kelly Loeffler. Or Matt Bevin.
You can't win with politicians like that. They appeal to no one. They go down in flames.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
All the other Blights had some sort of attack or defensive trait that would have made it impossible for the champion to beat them. But I don't see why Revali should have been at a disadvantage to Windblight.
Mipha couldn't beat Waterblight Ganon because she had no ranged attacks to get it on the ceiling.
Daruk couldn't beat Fireblight because he didn't have bombs to block the second phase.
Urbosa couldn't beat Thunderblight because she had no magnesis to redirect the lightning.
But Revali has no obvious weakness to be exploited by Windblight's attack pattern.
He could have dodged the wind blasts and his Great Eagle Bow should have been ideal to stun and counter from a distance.
Controversial take: lower, not higher, taxes are a sign of authoritarianism.
When a country has low taxes, that tends to mean the state directly owns an industry that produces most of its revenue.
Which means the majority of the people aren't even needed to keep the state running and therefore their opinions — and rights — are irrelevant.
Governments with higher taxes, OTOH, own less of the overall economy and are therefore more dependent on their people — and their people's civic consent — to operate.
You voted for a law written by, effectively, a pair of Ponzi schemes (Uber and Lyft) that wanted taxpayers to prop them up, and in doing so you kicked the legs out from under a MUCH broader segment of the population's labor rights.
The really crazy part is that this all started because the legislature stupidly applied AB5 to a big set of tech and creative workers who weren't intended to be covered — but Prop 22 doesn't even get rid of AB5, it just exempts the workers that are *supposed* to be covered!
I know a lot else is going on today, but the GOP President Pro Tempore of the PA Senate just flat-out refused to seat a Democratic senator-elect, despite his win being certified and upheld by the state Supreme Court.
And tossed the Lt. Governor out of the chamber for objecting.
The rationale is that Sen.-elect Brewster only won by a few hundred votes, and the margin was decided by mail-in ballots that his Republican opponent contested.
But the Supreme Court ALREADY RULED those ballots legal, under a law that the Republican legislature itself passed.
I don't know exactly what the legal process is from here, but it seems to me that PA Senate Republicans are at best in contempt of the state Supreme Court, and at worst staging a bloodless coup.
Nobody who advocates for repealing Section 230 seems to be able to answer this most basic question: how would making it easier to sue tech platforms for the content they publish make them MORE willing to publish content they don't agree with?
People like @rachelbovard seem to have Section 230 entirely backwards — they think without it, they could sue tech platforms for *not* allowing them to publish content.
But Section 230 isn't what prohibits that. The First Amendment is.
In reality, Section 230 *protects* free expression on the internet. Without it, tech platforms would have to police the you post for language that could get them sued, and they would err on the side of assuming anything could get them sued.