No. The staunch Republicans will still vote for Trump and the only way to beat that is for there to be an incredibly cohesive force among a population that isn't very cohesive in the first place. The Republicans actually have it easy, they align and bond on lots of things. The center and left align on very few things and fight amongst themselves.
> The Republicans actually have it easy, they align and bond on lots of things.
I have seen some videos of Trump voters who are claiming that JD Vance is a traitor to the white race for marrying a non-white. And their kids have non-white names.
They are quite upset about this. Some of them are so disgusted by this that they might not vote at all. One can only hope.
Trump's political machine pouring money into primaries to oppose dissenting Republicans is a great corroboration of how little cohesion is in the Republican party. It's not happenstance that the first ever removal of a speaker of the House was a Republican and was last year. Unfortunately, fighting a battle to unify tends to result in more battles...
I’m curious: what do the Republicans align on, besides “Win at all cost” and “Liberals are bad”?
Trump doesn’t care about the budget, doesn’t care about protecting our allies, doesn’t care about abortion. I’d wager he doesn’t care about immigration, either, except as a way to get votes.
A lot of it is just identity. They vote for Republicans because they are Republicans. It's that simple. You could introduce a moderate Democrat that ticks a lot of Republican policy boxes, and most Republicans still wouldn't vote for them.
I would argue that 'win at all cost' is played by both parties. It's a form of 'the ends justify the means' and I really wish that people of both parties understood the long-term implications of that approach.
Democrats encourage their fellow elected officials to step down when convicted of crimes. They notoriously don’t encourage a mob to attack the Capitol to interfere with counting of the electoral ballots. And they haven’t spent the last 4 years undermining confidence in the election system.
There are plenty of faults in the Democratic party, but “both sides” is a tired and inaccurate trope.
The Democrats have yet to remove or seriously call for Senator Menendez to resign for serious corruption and obvious crimes while the Republicans removed Santos for campaign lies knowing a Democrat would replace him.
I think some of that is just the different norms in the senate vs the house. The senate is very much about decorum and tradition, whereas the house is more of a free for all.
I think it is funny to watch how people on a programming forum think "democracy" is a decent enough designed system.
It is very interesting how the manner in which people think changes when the topic changes, and also how we focus only on the flaws in intelligence of the supposedly dumbest among us.
> There are plenty of faults in the Democratic party, but “both sides” is a tired and inaccurate trope.
Only if the claim is both sides are identically bad, which is rarely the case.
It is amazing how simple memes (and boy, does our culture run on them) can inject bugs into cognition.
Since you brought it up. Let's take your same question and apply it to Democrats. What do the Democrats align on, besides "Win at all cost" and "Trump is bad"?
Democrats hail from several religions (and a lot of atheists) and have a lot of independent thinkers. They are not mass-"programmable" like religious Christians and Republicans are. Republicans can be mass-software-updated by their leaders very quickly. Democrats' lack of programmability makes it harder for them to align and win.
Democrats tend to contain a lot of types of socially oppressed groups of people, each of which is fighting their own battle, but they cannot be bothered to fight another oppressed groups' battle.
Democrats hail from multiple social classes that each want the other taxed more out of spite, not understanding that higher taxes of anyone in the economic food chain is going to make it harder for everyone.
Christianity, God Bless America, conservative immigration law, well-being of rural people and small towns, second amendment, Made in USA, white-normalized culture ...
Democrats very rarely align. They fight between factions about whether BLM, LGBT, or Stop Asian Hate is more important, ffs. They can't even come together and fight for all of the above.
Evangelicals love Trump (in one of the biggest “this massive group of people clearly was lying about its stated moral principles” reveals in recent memory).
> Other than promoting coal, what has Trump done for rural America’s economy?
Protectionist tariffs, particularly those imposed on Chinese imports were so popular that the Democratic party has silently endorsed and continued them through the Biden presidency.
What are you talking about? Christians (American ones at least) absolutely love Trump. I'll probably get a bunch of replies here from non-Christian liberals making a bunch of theological claims about a religion they don't even believe in, but the people who decide what is or isn't "real Christianity" are the people who actually go to church and call themselves Christians, not a bunch of people who don't believe strongly in any religion. Talk all you want about how Trump doesn't exemplify so-called "Christian values", but that's totally irrelevant. The Americans who actually go to church every Sunday are showing up at Trump rallies like he's the Messiah's chosen one and they're voting for him, and of course defending him at every turn no matter how much you might think his words or actions don't align with your perception of the religion.
>Other than promoting coal, what has Trump done for rural America’s economy?
He's given it a lot of lip-service, and that's all that matters for these voters. And also very importantly, he delivered for rural America by installing a bunch of SCOTUS justices who managed to overturn Roe v Wade. How's that good for rural America's economy? It isn't, but that doesn't matter, because this issue was #1 or #2 for these voters, especially the ones that most strongly identified as "Christian".
It's amazing how easy it is to see why Democrats keep losing elections to the MAGA crowd, and how they completely fail to understand their mentality and what's really important to them.
> What are you talking about? Christians (American ones at least) absolutely love Trump. I'll probably get a bunch of replies here from non-Christian liberals making a bunch of theological claims about a religion they don't even believe in, but the people who decide what is or isn't "real Christianity" are the people who actually go to church and call themselves Christians, not a bunch of people who don't believe strongly in any religion.
How about a reply from an evangelical Christian who goes to Church? How about if I use words from Christ himself?
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ [1]
From what I can tell, there are different camps of Evangelicals and "Evangelicals" voting for Trump.
Let me say at the start that "Christian Nationalism" is an inherent contradiction in terms. Jesus over and over again had the opportunity to become a political power, and explicitly rejected it [2][3][4]. Anything trying to explicitly enforce "Christianity" with political power is out of line with Christ's teaching. This has always been true, but it is particularly true now. A lot of the people I see on TV pounding on about God and Christianity don't show any evidence that they know anything at all about Jesus; I don't have any reason to believe them to be Christians.
Others are real Christians -- people trying to follow Jesus and take his teachings seriously -- who are simply deluded. They actually believe that the election was stolen; they actually believe that the trials against him are witch-hunts. They're not voting for Trump the person, but for an imaginary person they've been fed.
Others are real Christians, and know that Trump is a vile man and a criminal, but somehow have convinced themselves that the Biden "crime family" and/or the Democrats are just as bad, and are cynically choosing someone they think will benefit their own group. Either they don't think a second Trump term will be worse than the first term, or they don't care.
Consider the "gay wedding cake" case [5]. Evangelicals in loads of creative professions (including baking, photography, and so on) came perilously close to having to chose between violating their consciences or losing their livelihoods. Getting a solid majority of the court who would vote "their way" about these sorts of issues was considered by many to be worth the cost of a Trump presidency. (NB I'm not trying to make an argument either way about that case; rather, I'm trying to show the mindset of someone in 2015 deciding whether to vote for Trump or Hillary.)
Also note that I don't consider any of these things excuses. Belief is not a morally neutral activity; there may be people who genuinely had no opportunity to understand Trump's true nature, but I don't think that applies to the vast majority of Christians who have an inaccurate picture of him; particularly after the warnings we have throughout the New Testament to be on our guard against people trying to control us.
Furthermore, while we have the example of using the legal system to defend ourselves (in the case of Paul's various trials in Acts), we're also told to expect to persecuted for our beliefs. Hiring a lawyer is one thing; voting for a man like Trump is something completely different.
And there are plenty of Evangelicals who are outspoken against Trump; but far too few.
All that to say -- unfortunately, yes, Trump is popular with Christians and people who consider themselves Christians.
There's no solid evidence these quotes are accurate (plus, they're translated if he ever existed and made any such speeches). The entire belief is based on faith.
>Anything trying to explicitly enforce "Christianity" with political power is out of line with Christ's teaching. This has always been true
That's your opinion, based on your interpretation. Other Christians in the US have a different opinion.
>A lot of the people I see on TV pounding on about God and Christianity don't show any evidence that they know anything at all about Jesus; I don't have any reason to believe them to be Christians.
That again is your opinion, based on your interpretation of a quote written down by some religious person centuries after the deity that supposedly uttered it was on Earth. Other Christians have a different opinion.
As a non-Christian, it's not up to me to decide whose beliefs are "correct". And the people you disagree with aren't some vanishingly small, fringe minority; they're a significant part of the US voting public. I appreciate that your beliefs are different, and personally I like your beliefs more than theirs, but you're not going to convince me that yours are more correct; as far as I'm concerned, neither one has any basis in reality. Yours certainly sound nicer, but Christianity has well over a millennium of history of being tied to state power, so the other side has a lot of precedent.
>Others are real Christians -- people trying to follow Jesus and take his teachings seriously -- who are simply deluded.
Again, "real Christians" in your opinion. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who self-identifies honestly as a "Christian" is one, regardless of how incongruent their actions and opinions seem to be with some of the teachings of some of the denominations of that religion.
Anyway, I do appreciate you doing this analysis of the different factions, and I do agree with your breakdown of them.
>Consider the "gay wedding cake" case
As much as I hate many of the SCOTUS decisions in the last 8 years or so, I actually agree with this one, or at least its outcome, though I think the justices all missed the real issue. If the gay couple had wanted to buy an off-the-shelf (non-custom) cake, the baker should have been required to sell it to them. However, (as I understand the case) they wanted a custom cake, so basically they wanted to commission artwork. I think that should be subject to 1A protection; no one should be legally required to create artwork for something they disagree with.
> As far as I'm concerned, anyone who self-identifies honestly as a "Christian" is one, regardless of how incongruent their actions and opinions seem to be with some of the teachings of some of the denominations of that religion.
I understand where you're coming from, but this is just an unworkable definition. It reminds me of a snapshot of a social media post I saw which read, "I'm a vegan who eats meat. Yes, we exist." "People trying to follow Jesus and take his teachings seriously" certainly isn't a perfect definition, but it's a lot more useful than "anyone who self-identifies as a Christian".
There's a huge difference here: you would have a very, very difficult time finding anyone who identifies as a vegan and also eats meat knowingly and willingly. However, Christians who don't fit your definition of "true Christian" are a large part of the US voting population, so much that the "No True Scotsman" fallacy seems to apply here. Even worse, if we look at Christians over the last two millennia, especially during the middle ages, the vast majority of them don't appear to be "true Christians" according to your definition.
Christian conservatives are decidedly a minority in the Republican party, and increasingly marginalized. Much to the distress of that faction, the offical Republican platform no longer talks about gay marriage nor banning abortion except for late-term.
The Republicans have moderated a lot over the last decade. Their current platform reads like the Democrat platform from the 2000s.
A mixed ticket isn't going to align them better.