From: psperson@old.netcom.invalid   
      
   On Sun, 28 Dec 2025 16:09:33 -0800, The Horny Goat    
   wrote:   
      
   >On Sat, 27 Dec 2025 19:38:11 +1300, Your Name    
   >wrote:   
   >   
   >>>> Every Trumper knows this stuff. It's like, you know, third grade to them.   
   >>>    
   >>> Isn't third grade the MAGA equivalent of a doctorate?  :P   
   >>   
   >>MAGA nutters can't even manage to graduate from pre-school.  :-\   
   >   
   >You shouldn't really assume everyone who voted for Trump in 2024 were   
   >true MAGA-ites. I would suspect that at least half of those who voted   
   >for him in 2024 simply believed he was better than the other name on   
   >the ballot.   
   >   
   >After all - in politics you don't have to be a 10 to get elected - a 4   
   >is good enough is the other candidate is a 2 or a 3. I don't think   
   >either Biden or Harris was the best the Democrats had in 2024 but I do   
   >believe Trump was better than either of those two, not withstanding I   
   >think he did a poor job on the pandemic earlier (among other issues)   
   >and were I an American probably would have chosen him over Harris who   
   >I think was the weakest candidate the Dems have run in this century.   
      
   I think the Dems, in their eagerness to lose whenever possible,   
   /really/ outdid themselves in 2024.   
      
   As I've noted before -- Democrats don't actually win (this is   
   particular to the Presidency), Republicans lose.    
      
   Like a race where the winner wins only because the other racer   
   stumbles. The result says nothing about who was better.   
      
   >And whoever the GOP runs in 2028 won't be running on Trump's record   
   >probably even if it's Vance. (Who at this point is for now the #1 GOP   
   >candidate until he proves differently - and I say that as someone who   
   >read his book the week after he was nominated - I was especially   
   >interested in reading it as I had read his professor Amy Chua's Battle   
   >Hymn of the Tiger Mother and noted Vance's tribute to her - they're   
   >clearly on warm terms particularly as she introduced him to his future   
   >wife)   
      
   If that Republican is smart, the campaign will be based on an   
   anti-Trump (if not anti-MAGA) message.    
      
   "This time we'll do it right, because  actually knows how   
   to do the job."   
      
   Depending on who the Dems run, that could win.   
      
   OTOH, if the Republicans (by not curbing Trump) are associate with a   
   major disaster, then (as, IIRC, I noted in 1996 [1]) "the Democrats   
   could run the mumified corpses and Marx and Lenin and /still/ win".   
      
   [1] Newt shut down the Federal Government, and then was appalled to   
   find that, contrary to Republican ideological beliefs, the American   
   people /liked/ their Federal Government and wanted it to remain open.   
   Basically, he handed 1996 to Clinton on a silver platter.   
   --    
   "Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,   
   Who evil spoke of everyone but God,   
   Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)