Plan B Forum

There has to be a sequel to the ditch Trump at any cost schemes.

Mueller came and went.

Impeachment was a joke.

Can the media panic over COVID-19 provide a clue? That looks to be a possibility. What say you?

I would hope that they've learned that Trump knows enough ways (and has enough m⃥i⃥n⃥d⃥l⃥e⃥s⃥s⃥ ⃥z⃥o⃥m⃥b⃥i⃥e⃥s⃥  supporters at his beck and call in Congress and elsewhere) to thwart any 'normal' means of getting rid of a treasonous, traitorous, ignorant, incompetent racist xenophobe, whether that be through the impeachment process or the normal system of checks and balances — a system that he has been methodically dismantling ever since he took office — that any attempt to get him to step down or be removed before November is doomed to failure.

Maybe they could get someone to put him in a trance and give him a post-hypnotic suggestion to step down or commit suicide (the better of the two options, to my way of thinking), but I believe you have to possess a certain amount of intelligence in order to be hypnotized in the first place.

I expect that their best chance will be to rally around whoever turns out to be the Democratic nominee and make sure they get out and vote for him/her, whoever it may be, even if you have to cast your ballot with one hand while holding your nose with the other.  Vote the good-for-nothing, cock-sucking, motherfucking, son-of-a-bitch bastard out.

And then, since Trump is such a big fan of Putin and the Russian way of doing thing, it's off to the gulag with him (I wish!).

-"BB"-

I think at this point, they can just rely on TRUTH and the people having some common sense. Look how he is throwing the people of Michigan under the bus, for instance. If he just keeps being himself over the next few months - and the death toll goes where Dr. Fauci predicts - people will flock to their mailboxes in October with tens of millions of ballots for Biden.

COVID-19 is a hoax by the democrats. Fake news. Got it.

Joe Guy wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:44 pm

COVID-19 is a hoax by the democrats. Fake news. Got it.

I'm thinking Trump's handling of the pandemic is being considered for another "What time is it, kiddies? IT"S IMPEACHMENT TIME! .... again." With apologies to Buffalo Bob.

Darren wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:52 pm

I'm thinking ...

But that's not what any Democratic politician anywhere is thinking. (If for no other reason than the fact that Republican Senators have clearly demonstrated that they will *NOT* remove Trump from office under *ANY* circumstances *WHATSOEVER*.)

No, the election is our best shot—nay, our ONLY shot—at ending Trump's reign.

FLUSH THE TURD! NOVEMBER THIRD!

Econoline wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 29, 2020 7:15 pm

Darren wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:52 pm

I'm thinking ...

But that's not what any Democratic politician anywhere is thinking. (If for no other reason than the fact that Republican Senators have clearly demonstrated that they will *NOT* remove Trump from office under *ANY* circumstances *WHATSOEVER*.)

No, the election is our best shot—nay, our ONLY shot—at ending Trump's reign.

FLUSH THE TURD! NOVEMBER THIRD!

Wanna bet? $100 to your favorite charity if Trump isn't re-elected.

Nuh-uh. As I've said before, this election (like the one in 2016) is too close to call. We need, at least, those ~80,000 voters in WI, MI, and PA that we didn't get last time, and it would be stupid to take them for granted the way Hillary did last time. I'm hoping to breathe a sigh of relief on November 4. But while I'm occasionally optimistic, whenever that happens I have to remind myself to keep thinking in terms of an uphill battle. It ain't over 'til it's over.

You can't blame me for trying. I made money in 2016 based on what I saw in Western PA and WV. AFAIK, nothing has changed with the exception of the walkaways.

Coronavirus has Trump approval ratings rising. That's not surprising — or likely to last.
Presidents usually become more popular in times of crisis, but by historical standards, Trump's surge is puny.
March 28, 2020, 3:51 AM CDT
By David Mark

President Donald Trump’s tardy and inconsistent reaction to the coronavirus crisis has drawn torrents of criticism. Even Trump administration officials and people close to the White House who usually defend his approach have expressed concern about his uneven performance in daily press briefings. The media coverage, not surprisingly, has been even harsher, filled with accounts of the bumbling news conferences and woe-is-me complaints, as he offers scant empathy over the growing number of fatalities.

With Americans holed up at home by the millions out of fear of a deadly pandemic as the economy craters, Trump’s approval ratings should be near the depths of modern presidential performance. On par, say, with President George W. Bush’s 25 percent approval rating in early November 2008 as the worst recession since the Great Depression engulfed the country. Or even President Richard Nixon’s 24 percent approval rating in August 1974 on the eve of his resignation over Watergate.

Yet Trump’s approval ratings — an important gauge of his re-election chances a bit over seven months away — are staying strong, by some counts even reaching highs for his tenure. In part, that’s a sign that no matter how much criticism Democrats lob at Trump, and whatever amount of negative media coverage he endures, his base supporters are resolute and unflinching. But the surge in support that goes beyond his base is a reflection of a familiar phenomenon whereby presidents become more popular in times of crisis, and according to history, his surge is puny — and likely to be short-lived.

A recent ABC/Ipsos poll found a majority of Americans approve of the way Trump is managing the coronavirus crisis and 55 percent approve of the way he responded to it (43 said they disapprove). That’s a considerable bump up from Trump’s average 40 percent approval rating since he took office on Jan. 20, 2017, and it shows Americans are giving the president considerable leeway to navigate the coronavirus crisis.

Rising poll numbers for a president in a crisis, however, has happened many times before, and was already a political science trend in 1970 when John Mueller first named the “rally around the flag” effect in a paper called “Presidential Popularity From Truman to Johnson.”

Since then, we’ve seen the phenomenon at work many times. In March 1991, as President George H.W. Bush basked in the glow of the Gulf War victory, after U.S. forces successfully evicted Iraq from its occupation of Kuwait, his approval rating reached an astonishing 89 percent. That was the highest presidential job approval rating recorded since Gallup began keeping track in the 1940s.

President George W. Bush, too, saw his approval ratings skyrocket in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In the immediate aftermath, Bush’s approval ratings went even a tad higher than his father’s had a decade earlier, reaching 90 percent in a Gallup poll taken Sept. 21-22.

Presidential approval ratings have risen even in murkier crises. Forty years ago, during the start of the Iran hostage crisis, the “rally around the flag” effect also kicked in strongly for President Jimmy Carter. In a Gallup poll taken on Nov. 2-5, 1979, just as the American hostages were seized by Shia Islamic extremists at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the percentage of people who approved of Carter’s handling of the presidency was at an abysmal 32 percent. A month later, when Carter was seen as taking a strong and resolute stand against the new revolutionary Iranian government, his approval rating shot up to 61 percent.

Yet perhaps no example better reflects how fleeting the patriotic swirl of support in a crisis can be than the denouement of the Iran hostage crisis. Once a sense of futility about resolving the embarrassing episode sunk in by late winter and spring of 1980, after a botched rescue effort, Carter’s approval ratings went into freefall. In the end, the 444-day Iran hostage crisis contributed significantly to his landslide loss to Republican challenger Ronald Reagan.

And President George H.W. Bush’s polling heights famously didn’t last either, as he lost re-election 20 months later to Democratic challenger Bill Clinton in a race largely fought over the economy and other domestic issues.

Something similar could still happen with Trump, and is in fact is likely, because battling the coronavirus is likely to be a long slog filled with accounts of death and economic destruction. American progress against the virus will also be measured against other countries such as South Korea, which has proved more effective in “flattening the curve.”

Furthermore, that poll showing 55 percent approve of Trump’s coronavirus response isn’t nearly as high as other presidents’ approval ratings in times of crisis. It isn’t an insurmountable lead either for the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden, to overcome. If anything, for Democrats, it could be worse.

Still, Democrats hoping to see Trump drop to Nixonian-levels are in for disappointment. The past five years since Trump declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination have demonstrated that his base of support is rock solid. Since his inauguration, his approval ratings have held remarkably steady. In fact, they remained virtually unchanged through the impeachment process, which concluded with his Senate acquittal on Feb. 5.

And with Trump, past precedents only go so far. He has defied political expectations since nabbing the 2016 Republican nomination and then beating Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in one of the greatest upsets in American election history. Assumptions that Trump will be hurt politically by the coronavirus need to be taken with a grain of salt. After all, Democratic impeachment efforts arguably helped Trump politically.

There’s every reason to believe this could happen again through the coronavirus crisis, since Trump’s approval rating is the most stable since Gallup began measuring it when Harry Truman was president. Since taking office, Trump has reached a high of 49 percent on that index, but hasn’t gone lower than 35 percent. That 14-point range is a marked difference from most other presidents, who have seen wild swings up and down, often due to events outside their control. Opinions of Trump, good and bad, are set and baked in like no president before.

But like Carter and the Iran hostage crisis, the coronavirus drama could linger. Trump has alternated between describing himself as a “wartime” president, implying a long-protracted fight, and pushing to reopen businesses even as top federal health officials advise against it. At this rate, Trump could still see his support gradually erode, like Carter.

Trump is betting that Americans don’t want to “change horses in midstream,” another long-standing dynamic that presidents in times of trouble use to hold onto power. Americans have long shown their willingness to rally round the flag and support an embattled commander-in-chief. The question is for how long.

nothing has changed

LOL

Darren this must be another one of those things like your continuing insistence that Harry Truman wasn't a politician...

You're just going to keep saying it despite the mountain of evidence proving you wrong...

You keep insisting that the political dynamics today are exactly the same as in 2016 when after three plus years of The Mad King and the results of the 2018 election this is clearly and demonstrably false...

A mad king who crows about his Nielsen ratings while thousands are suffocating to death.

I wonder when the accusations that COVID-19 victims are really "crisis actors"* will begin...



*(hired by George Soros or the DNC or the Clintons or the Deep State)

Maybe the best thing to come of this would be the US realising that electing lying fucking morons isn't a good thing?

I like your sunny optimism, Gob. Maybe.

Do not forget, the majority of is voting DID NOT VOTE FOR HIM, and he didn’t even get the highest number of votes.

Also, we’ve elected some pretty terrific people prior to him. So careful of that overlywide and historically inaccurate brush you’re using.

I was referring to the fuckwits you've elected, ( in my lifetime,) no other presidents.

Reagan*, Bush II and now Trump.

(*Sorry Lord Jim.)

Guin--in my lifetime (since Eisnhower) I think the presidents have fallen into two categories, horrible and acceptable, I cannot think of one president who deserves the moniker of "pretty terrific" or even "good". Sure some have done one (or even a few) good things, but the failures generally outweigh the good, and most leave behind some things that are pretty inexcusable.

(*Sorry Lord Jim.)

No need to apologize, Old Darling...

I've realized for years that you know fuck all about Mr. Reagan, so I pay absolutely no attention to anything you have to say about him...

Big RR wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 30, 2020 3:48 pm

Guin--in my lifetime (since Eisnhower) I think the presidents have fallen into two categories, horrible and acceptable, I cannot think of one president who deserves the moniker of "pretty terrific" or even "good". Sure some have done one (or even a few) good things, but the failures generally outweigh the good, and most leave behind some things that are pretty inexcusable.

You will note I wrote “pretty terrific people,” and your edit changes the meaning if what I wrote. My point was not fuckwits. Their qualities and accomplishments as President is another conversation all together.