I think the PJ25b people are pragmatic enough to get those good optics in the short term.

If Trump actually gets adamant they can just make him a trophy and he’ll be happy.

To find the cloud in the silver lining, I can easily see how this doesn’t happen.

Currently we are outraged at ICE and military in our streets inflicting harm on innocents, nervous about getting in a war no one would have even thought of, suffering from tariffs increasing prices and ACA premiums going way up.

The thing about every single one of those is that Republicans caused them and Republicans can mostly fix them. Simply by undoing the things they caused in the first place makes folks feel like things are getting fixed, and many will forget why they were broken and just be focused on how they got better during the election year.

So I expect immigration enforcement to tone down (already saw a story to that effect), for them to manage a last minute ACA subsidy extension with much drama, pulling back a lot of tariffs, and chilling out on Venezuela for 2026. Going extra by cutting some “tariff fund” checks and some HSA deposits, to make sure the people get some money, even if it is smaller than the money lost, people fall for “windfalls”. Maybe throw some folks under the bus like RFK Jr and Hegseth, to drain the swamp so to speak.

Their goal was not to destroy the US per se, it was to just get them out of the region. Destroying might have been nice, but only in a way that destroyed their power.

So an unleashed unhinged US was not something they wanted. Sure we might not have the freedom, but they never cared one way or another about that.

And also 100% why we won’t ever have that

“but at least they aren’t Democrats”

A refrain I’ve heard so often from them after bemoaning some inhumanly bad thing they think a Republican has done.

I don’t agree with that strategy either, but she didn’t carry enough votes to have made the difference anyway…

Have funds in an index fund but not specific stocks.

I could accept owning stock, but no buying or selling as of the moment you register as a candidate until a year out of office

Yeah but it’s not like he actually uses his brain anyway…

No, they are appealing to MAGA folks that are picturing getting rid of all the dark skinned people they don’t like.

The people that consider that nuance have already been against the ICE crap, you don’t have to convince those. The only people that can be convinced are those that you need to get their racism aside before they’ll join you. It’s distasteful, but it’s a way to grow the voices condemning this behavior.

Hey, he earned that purple heart when that skateboard viciously injured him

On the flip side, folks have repeatedly shown Trump to be susceptible to being manipulated. Famously flipping back and forth on issues based on who had the most recent pleasant conversation with him.

It’s distasteful, but an opportunity that shouldn’t be skipped. Otherwise only the worst people get their turn at manipulating him.

Yes, also, their excuse for why “they’re eating the pets” was worth hearing out even as it was demonstrably false. Because even if it didn’t exactly happen, it is a reasonable perspective on what “those people” would do…

Someone is going to rationalize it by saying "while it was false, it was “directionally true”, just what the leftists would do so it’s worth thinking about.

I continue to think at least his administration, maybe not him specifically, drove prices up in 2025 on purpose.

Imagine midterm campaign ads, bragging about how prices have decreased, and citing annual percentage decrease. Damn near impossible when you are always trying your best to manage affordability but perhaps actually doable if you blow things up the year prior.

If they did somehow cut a partial rebate check from the tariffs right smack in the middle of midterm campaigns, they brag about lower prices and people feel the weight of that bonus in their pocket, even if it was their own money in the first place. Lots of people act like tax refund is some sort of spring bonus instead of repayment of a 0% loan they have to the government.

In short, they are going to win midterms by botching the off year.

I have been predicting that the tariffs will be dropped as we go into midterms. They are going to have so many campaign ads about bringing pruces so far down year over year…

So much easier to make a metric good if you screw it up first.

"This is this person’s view, who was there for a lot of this, but that he was into the barely legal type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls,

That’s not ‘barely legal’…

This assumes this is an annual thing and not a one-time stunt.

I think this is a potential component in a ‘2025 sucks to make 2026 look better’.

Imagine that they use part of the tariff revenue over 18 months to issue a check roughly that size right smack dab in the middle of midterm campaign season. Maybe also implementing one of those random tariff pauses, say, 90 days covering the tail end of election season to get prices to maybe come down. If there’s one thing they should have learned is that the average person sincerely loves getting their own money back without interest and views it as a ‘nice bonus’, like they do every April.

So they drive prices up in 2025, then use some of that to ‘stimulus’ the voters as they implement pricing relief…

I think everything is coming together for them to win the midterms. People have already forgotten about USAID and similar, and maybe associate that more with Musk than Trump. People are pissed about the inflation but this would likely erase that concern particularly if they ease up for election season. They endangered people by taking away SNAP, but democrats caved and the Republicans have a chance to make short term healthcare extension and vindicate their ‘democrats caused this by being stubborn’ narrative. Further, since open enrollment closed and it’s “too late”, one thing I heard floated was implementing the subsidy as a cash rebate to those that would have benefited, and just like this refund here, that goes even further than reducing the costs in the minds of the voters. If they want a little boost they can also do things like throw RFK Jr. under the bus and install a vaguely credible person in his position, to illustrate they can improve things.

Well this is pretty much exactly what Republicans needed.

They pitched that they were perfectly willing to be reasonable and the democrats were the crazy ones.

Now they pass an extension, specifying to block the non-existent illegal immigrant gap and say “see, we were ready to take care of the people, but the democrats forced things to be bad, and these few democrats reluctantly came over which just proves they were in the wrong”

Another chunk of what I assume is their strategy: Make 2025 bad in ways to make it easier to make 2026 feel great by comparison.

I feel it’s premature to assume JD would be the GOP candidate. No one particularly likes him, even as some people like trump for whatever reason.

Yeah, I knew someone who voted that way, he voted for Trump and we see how that worked out…