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2020 U.S. Presidential Election - Took place November 3, 2020. Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden assumed office January 20, 2021.
- Thread starter Pickle Dick
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- Jun 14, 2018
I was about to say "Anne Coulter is an irrelevant has-been controlled opposition grifter", but everyone else here already said that for me, so I'll just say this:
Fox News is not the conservative's friend, and the vast majority of it is controlled opposition.
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Housewife edgy.
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Edgekaren
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- May 16, 2019
Never thought I'd have to be Coulter's devil's advocate, but...
Coulter had been banging the drum for GOP populism since 2012, before Romney even lost. She doubled down after the election, which got her quietly nudged to the side because the establishment wanted to blame the loss on Romney being boring. The party focused on governors and watered down Tea Party candidates, which is why the primary stage in 2016 focused on Rubio, Cruz, Walker, Christie, Kasich, Jindal, etc.
That's why she called it for Trump on Maher and got laughed at. She's a consistent immigration hawk and (at the time) was basically the lone voice for populism on the right (aside from the alt-right, which also kicked off in 2012 but nobody had ever heard of until the left needed a boogeyman).
What she doesn't do is come up with practical electoral strategies. She can be a purist--call it a brand or edgelording for TV spots or whatever--and identify problems on the right, without having a solid fix for it. Her call for populism was almost entirely a messaging analysis; she basically figured that would make conservatism generally more popular, then something something the GOP becomes electable. Turns out that "something something" was Trump himself, and the rest of the party (Punished Cruz, Lindsey Graham, the MAGA crowd) are being taught populism and shit-posting in real time.
If "going against Republicans" is the criteria for controlled opposition, then you can throw Trump as well as a good chunk of the intellectual conservative movement in there as well.
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My criteria for controlled opposition is anyone that is a political pundit that claims to be a revolutionary even though they suck up to the establishment. They try to appeal to you through ideas, but really they just want your viewership. They want to make you seem them one way while also influencing ideas, but then they claim to say that they are not endorsing those ideas even though they reinforce them. Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Rachel Maddow, Don Lemon, any late-night show host, all controlled opposition.
So....pretty much mostly anyone that's in the media.
MrJokerRager
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That is everyone literally on television including Jon Stewart also back in the day.
Honka Honka Burning Love
In Clown World, the only god is the one who Honks.
True & Honest Fan
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Hence why TV news is such a fucking joke.
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I think what you're describing is people operating within the Overton Window to push their views, not necessarily being shills. Like Ann Coulter inspired Trump's whole immigration policy in 2015-16, and she is very effective at being this lone, loud indignant figure to try and drag him further to the right, while everyone else is telling him to pivot to the center. I don't see why a billionaire bankrolls Coulter's agenda when it upsets the existing gravy train.
Tucker is perhaps controlled op, but again, why not just have someone just like Hannity on the nighttime slot? Tucker actively critiques Trump for not living up to America First, and carries water for, well maybe not the alt-right, but certainly whatever is sprouting up in the GOP to replace the stagnant neo-con and evangelical mindsets. This is not somebody I would have on my network if I wanted controlled opposition. In fact, his sermon being the most popular one on Fox tells you it's not the network really pushing him, rather its the public appetite for such opinions driving success here. I'd see something like Turning Points being controlled opp because it's a complete antithesis. There's no grassroots yearning for what they're selling, and despite endorsements from across the political spectrum, they still can't muster a crowd that isn't absolutely riddled with heckling groypers.
If your criteria for controlled opposition is that these people behave enough to work with the existing media juggernauts? Well, I can't prove you wrong. But in my view controlled opp are the pundits that look at Trump's victory (very clearly a rejection of open borders, open trade deals, a pushback on some progressive cultural lunacy, and a desire for manufacturing jobs) and uses their platform to argue tax cuts as the be all and end-all for his legislative agenda.
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- Apr 16, 2019
It's very interesting that y'all give her so much credit for that prediction. You can't take it face value.
As people have mentioned in this thread, she is an edgelord. Exactly what would have been the downside of her making that call? Zero. No one would have remembered if she was wrong, but everyone remembers that she was right.
I'm sure at least one person predicted Kirsten Gillibrand would get the nomination. Who? I dunno because no one remembers. But if she did get it, everyone would be talking about how that person has great political instincts and is really in touch with the electorate, blah, blah blah. But everyone also seems to forget all the failed predictions.
How many people wrongly called the stock market bottom in 2009? Tons. What were their names? I have no clue. But Mark Haines guessed it right and now the low point is forever called the Haines Bottom.
Here's a Sports Illustrated cover from 2014.
Of course the Astros did in fact win the World Series in 2017. If they didn't, would anyone remember this cover from three years earlier? Nope. But now Ben Reiter gets to play the genius. Seriously, how many athletes have been on the cover touted as the next superstar and subsequently bombed? Bushels. But no one remembers. They only remember the ones that pan out.
So yeah, I give her little to no credit for that one. Especially since I believe it was born out of a desire to be controversial and not out of actual foresight.
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Sure, that's a version of the prediction fallacy: given enough people making predictions, every single possibility will be covered, and you'll always find someone who predicted it right. Accurate predictions don't mean the underlying model is correct. It's how the proverbial blind squirrel finds a nut every so often, and how a stopped clock is 100% accurate exactly once a day.
But the point here isn't to praise her political analysis skills, the point is why she called the nomination for Trump. He ticks 3 of her core boxes: anti-immigration, anti-Islam, and pro-populism. The first two she's been banging on about since Bush, and the 3rd for a few years before Trump showed up. That's enough to call it sincere support.
Maybe she called his success because she thought the GOP primaries were ripe for influence by populist wave, and Trump was the only one trying it. Maybe she got lucky calling her favorite candidate to be the winner, but then every sincere supporter who thinks they're part of a silent majority has the same problem.
Either way, I don't think she's being controlled by either party, she's poked both of them in the eyes enough that any damage she does to one gets cancelled out by the damage she does to the other.
Either way, I don't think she's being controlled by either party, she's poked both of them in the eyes enough that any damage she does to one gets cancelled out by the damage she does to the other.
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- Dec 24, 2019
I'm not a Coulter fan by any means, but it paid off reading her Adios America book because it went to explain both her mindset and Trump's regarding immigration. She believed the GOP was learning the complete wrong lesson from Romney's loss.
Instead of pushing to go from 5% black support to 30%, or 10% Latino support to 55%, why not just go from 70% white support to 72%? And that's exactly what Trump's strategy was, something he only managed because the Hillary campaign laboured under the assumption the Rust Belt would stay loyal despite their continued neglect.
That book goes to explain how Republicans engage in this delusion where they think large scale Latino immigration can happen and they'll be able to convince enough to vote red. Sure, the Mexican-Americans don't like drag-queen children or gay marriage, but you're not gonna convince them to get on board with tax cuts or corporate subsidies. Remove the (numerically dwindling mind you) Cuban vote and it's not even up for discussion which direction Latinos lean. It's an ongoing absurdity, conjured out of wishful thinking and economic pressure from donors.
This isn't to say Latinos will *never* bloc-vote for the GOP, but the USA is a deeply divided country, and any attempts to reconcile these divisions won't be done over a 15 month electoral campaign. Not in any meaningful way. If the GOP want to win in the long-term they've got to assimilate these disparate groups into American culture. It can be done, and for many Latino-Americans it''s already happened, but it will be difficult given Mexico is a direct neighbour. I mean look to the past to see the magnitude of what this requires. The Russian Jews had nowhere else to go, the Irish and the Italians still identify with their heritage, yet are clearly different as a diaspora to the cohort remaining in their respective nations, and it took 2 world wars to basically shame German-Americans into giving up ties to their heritage.
And ironically, Trump's ideological rhetoric at least opens that pathway. A Jeb! or Romney victory would have just been more head-in-the-sand inaction.
Garm
kiwifarms.net
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- Jun 5, 2019
I know people still complaining about cages.
They got as close to being literally cucked in 2016 on top of the election.
Just a coincidence I am sure.
Anne Coulter is the same... Generation? As Bill O'Reilly. Namely just some old guard that got rode the conservative wave when Fox News came online.
She knows her audience follows her more than politics.
LargeChoonger
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I found the old 2016 election megathreads on r/politics. I'm somewhat disappointed with the lack of screeching compared to modern reddit, but it's a decent nostalgic salt mine
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- Apr 16, 2019
I see your Reddit and raise you Gawker, with what has to be my favorite title of an article ever, This Isn't Fun Anymore. Note the timestamp, 10:19pm.
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- Jan 19, 2020
So I wasn't aware of Nancy Pelosi doing bougie #relatable quarantine streams, but she's handed Trump another easy ad:
LargeChoonger
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Every time I think the elite have reached the maximum level of out-of-touch, they drop a new bombshell on me
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- Sep 15, 2019
It seems from my limited perspective (I was barely politically conscious in the early 2000s) that at least the last three administrations have had some form of excuse that, while they couldn't place the full blame on them without looking weak, it's still something you can point to that probably caused a lot of problems. Bush's was mostly the fever-pitch of post-9/11 power grabs and Middle East adventures. Obama's was a combo of the recession and absolute gridlock in congress.
Trump's so far has been a combination of the aforementioned gridlock and the entire Russiagate / Mueller saga. I often wonder how much he'll use the last three years of self-righteous grandstanding about him being a Russian plant as a crutch for why he hasn't completely sealed off the southern border, or bludgeoned China into an actual trade deal. I wonder if he'll mention it at all in the next few months, actually. It's not like he has to, his opponents still think it's A) real and B) not something that makes them look schizophrenic.
Trump's so far has been a combination of the aforementioned gridlock and the entire Russiagate / Mueller saga. I often wonder how much he'll use the last three years of self-righteous grandstanding about him being a Russian plant as a crutch for why he hasn't completely sealed off the southern border, or bludgeoned China into an actual trade deal. I wonder if he'll mention it at all in the next few months, actually. It's not like he has to, his opponents still think it's A) real and B) not something that makes them look schizophrenic.
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- May 16, 2019
I think his base is well aware of the Congressional fights over the wall. He won't have to find an excuse, he mostly needs to brag about what he's achieved so far and promise more of the same. It's disappointing that he didn't get it done, and likely won't get it done given another 4 years, but it's better than nothing.
As for China, it flew under the radar but he did sign a deal with China in January. It got lost in the middle of headlines about impeachment, then forgotten with the Chinese travel ban 2 weeks later and the pandemic shut down.
There was a phase 2 scheduled to be negotiated before the elections. Considering China shut down their entire economy and crashed it into a severe depression, I think Trump will be dealing strongly with them to get something juicy he can brag about. And he's now got a public actively looking to punish China and cheer on anyone who extracts vengeance on them for "Chinese virus" pandemic.
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- Aug 20, 2018
Nancy wanted my support but I don't think so!
I don't understand how this person is in charge of anything. What possessed this master strategist to show off her ice cream hoard in the middle of an economic crisis?
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