Donald Trump is the best of the worst of us

by philg

Although I thought that he needed a more optimistic and unrealistic message for Americans if he were to have any hope of prevailing in a general election, I am shocked that Ron DeSantis is now out:

Republicans are objectively terrible human beings and even the best Republican is inferior to the worst Democrat. Nonetheless, there are approximately 100 million Republicans in the U.S. (population 336 million plus, perhaps, another 10-20 million uncounted undocumented), 74 million of whom turned out to vote for Mr. Deplorable in 2020.

If Nikki Haley continues to underperform, are we forced to conclude that Donald Trump is the best person out of 100 million Americans? That’s sobering!

Is it now time to stop paying attention to Election 2024? Trump couldn’t beat the aging fossil Biden and the sexual opportunist Harris in 2020. Given that Americans are now drunk on student loan forgiveness, weekly abortion care, and other cornerstones of Biden/Harris policy, how could Trump possibly prevail? Is the path to victory Joe Biden dropping dead from old age between now and November and Trump runs against Kamala Harris?

21 thoughts on “Donald Trump is the best of the worst of us”

  1. If Nikki Haley continues to underperform, are we forced to conclude that Donald Trump is the best person out of 100 million Americans? Yes!
    Is it now time to stop paying attention to Election 2024? Yes!
    Given that Americans are now drunk on student loan forgiveness, weekly abortion care, and other cornerstones of Biden/Harris policy, how could Trump possibly prevail? By getting more votes in the electoral college!
    Is the path to victory Joe Biden dropping dead from old age between now and November and Trump runs against Kamala Harris? Yes!

  3. Phil, apologies, but I think you are missing what is going on. While Donald Trump isn’t a shoo-in, his chances of winning I think are much better than your comment suggests. Just watch Jamie Dimon (again), who is a life-long Democrat sing the praises of Trump last week. Dimon is very wise, and revered in corporate America. Many Americans are outraged at what socialism has wrought in the past many years under Obama and Biden (invasion of our country, DEI, CRT, BLM, defund the police, crime, China etc. etc.). They see people like Milei (see link from speech last week) describing the evils of socialism and what has befallen Argentina in the past 100 years…was once one of the wealthiest nations and now is destitute (think also Soviet Union, China, and many others) and they are beginning to wake the hell up and realize it is happening here. The recent dumping of Claudine Gay and Liz Magill by Harvard and Upenn I think reflects the outrage among many people that are getting engaged after sitting idly by.
    https://youtu.be/hk2fwOe4hJA
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk2fwOe4hJA

    • Javier Milei has a lot of great qualities, but I don’t see that he has expanded the base of support for a market economy here in the U.S. The majority of Americans are government-dependent and happy to continue their dependency (either they get direct money from the government, including by being employed by the government, or their income depends on government regulation/protection).

    • “their income depends on government regulation/protection” After regulation stole their creative income and made them into 9 to 5 slaves, maybe.

  6. And, Michelle is so “proud” to be an American! Her personality exudes such positivity and optimism!

  7. Let me offer the view from the other side.

    Suppose you were a democrat who woke up from a multi-year coma, shocked to find Trump up for election again, and you indeed believed that he was a threat to the Republic.

    And the A-team brought together to fight this threat? A near-dead Biden with Kamala on back-up.

    You would not believe it. You would think they were playing a prank on your or you were having a nightmare.

    You could not imagine a system which could give this outcome.

    People will read history books and not understand it.

  8. How could Trump possibly prevail? Rafael Yanushevsky’s new book “We Deserve the Government We Elect” may have the answer, here is a quote from the book:
    “American elected the president who cannot speak smoothly and formulate precisely his thoughts, the president whose son was a drug addict and his business activity was based on selling his father’s influence. It is difficult to imagine that such person had a chance to be elected in 2020 without a support of a group of elites which chose him as a convenient tool serving their interests.”

    Americans now have seen the results, and are going to elect a president in 2024 which will correct the mistake of the 2020 election. Rising inflation and the general population’s decrease in the standard of living will most likely give Trump the win, no one will care about his person faults, or that he managed to get a loan from a bank by exaggerating the value of his assets. January 6, what is that all about? The general population has already forgotten, it might as well be ancient history.

    The book is a really good read on politics and democracy from the view point of an engineer.
    Yanushevsky other books are in the area of Missile Guidance.

    • I haven’t read Yanushevsky’s book, but if he assumes people vote rationally (like engineers), that’s an assumption I would question.

    • note to readers: Pavel is a foreigner who has admitted to ”election interference” !!!

    • Sam, Yanushevsky’s main argument looks to be that for democracy to function, the voting population has to think critically, be informed and vote. Social media and mainstream media are effecting the “critical thinking” part, there is no analysis of the issues. The voter turn out is also low in the US. I am still going though the book, the kindle edition is $10 on amazon, much cheaper than his book on Modern Missile Guidance, which is $176.

      Here is another quote from the book:
      “Americans have a strong immune system to battle a toxic atmosphere of lies and dishonesty created by the leaders of the Democratic Party and its backers. These persons care only for power and money.”

      In addition, interesting and unique points on the war in Ukraine, a bit too much to summarize but here is another quote as an example:
      “The US relocated its Ukraine embassy operations from Kiev to Lvov. This means that Biden knew about the Russian invasion but did nothing to prevent it. Moreover, next day after Russia’s invasion, Biden offered to evacuate President Zelensky from Kiev, which can be considered as a direct help to Putin – removing Zelensky might open Putin the swiftest way to end the war in Ukraine.”

      Toucan Sam, philg, I highly recommend Yanushevsky’s book, very unique view point from a control systems engineer born in Kiev, moved to Moscow, became a “refusenik” and then moved to the US. You can definitely see the control systems thinking applied to democracy and politics.

      philg, the readers of this blog would probably be interested in your review of “We Deserve the Government We Elect”.

  9. As per this blog(Phil) Republicans are rational, peace loving, patriotic and capitalist bunch. Trump checks out all of these.

  10. This may be a smart move. Why spend a bunch of time, reputation, and money battling Trump for a year, and risk up ending up like Ted Cruz, endorsing a guy who publicly called your wife ugly, when he can drop out now, do popular, smart-sounding things in Florida and bank on the fact that he will be the first person called when Trump is removed as a candidate by either his health or any one of the myriad powers trying to end him politically? Trump may be ridiculous, but he seems to be really good at giving his opponents black eyes. Why take the beating and lose when you can wait and win? Also: being Trump’s VP would be a pretty good spot for someone who wanted to become president. What are the chances that the powers-that-be would let him peacefully term out if he were elected?

  11. I don’t understand the cult of DJT either, Phil. I expected a vigorous competition for the nomination, but it seems a lot voters are content to treat Trump as if he’s an incumbent.

    There’s not a lot of precedent for candidates running again after losing the general election. I believe Nixon was the last to do it, losing in 1960 against JFK, then winning in 1968 over Hubert Humphrey and a 3rd party pro-segregation candidate George Wallace. Wallace even won some states!

    • George: Maybe this is why people are such ardent NFL fans. We don’t see phenomena like this in American football (“real football”). People don’t say “47-year-old Peyton Manning did such a great job as QB through 2015 that we need to bring him back to the game as QB for the game-losing New England Patriots.” (Currently, the Patriots plan for returning to competitiveness is all about addressing systemic racism. See https://x.com/PhilipGreenspun/status/1747728739796926642?s=20 )

  12. Candidates do not run for a party because they are the “best person” — whatever that might mean. Perhaps a better category would be “qualified.” Some candidates are qualified in the sense that they have relevant experience — e.g. LBJ, Nixon, Eisenhower, Hillary, Bush I, Biden –and some are unqualified — JFK for example and Obama and Trump are two recent examples, A few have weak qualifications, Bush II, Carter, Clinton, Reagan all lacking federal government experience. It does not seem that being qualified makes for a good president so LBJ was one of the most qualified and also one of the worst. A lot of people think Reagan was the best US president in the post war era but he had no federal qualifications. Some people like Trump or Obama but neither would have been considered qualified. Haley and Gov. Ron would fall into the somewhat qualified category, less qualified than Trump who held the job already. A lot of the success of a candidate probably depends on luck — so Trump was unlucky that Covid occurred on his watch & Biden was lucky. Some qualified candidates also seem incompetent in an executive role like Biden or George McGovern as well as the somewhat qualified Carter. Some apparent mediocrities like Harry Truman rise to the occasion and other apparent mediocrities like Biden don’t. So it is hard to know who is “the best” candidate.

  13. What are the actuarial odds that at least one of the two pass away in the next 11 months? Isn’t it more than 10%? Honest question — I haven’t seen it reported anywhere. Dean Phillips and Nikki/Vivek/Ron are all running for that possibility alone.

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