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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI can't make sense out of this WaPo article: "Trump has set a hidden trap for Biden."
Trump has set a hidden trap for Biden. It could do great damage.Basically this guy (Greg Sargent) seems to be saying that by doing bad things and attracting a large following of bad people, Trump has trapped Biden into promising to do good things, and so now Biden will have to keep his promise, but by doing so he will offend Trump's bad followers.
All this will be designed to keep a pro-Trump insurgency as active and as angry as possible. There may be all kinds of overlap between that violent white supremacist activity and continued resistance to the Biden administration and anti-virus measures on the invented grounds that his victory was illegitimate.
The trap Trump set is to activate this insurgency, making it more fiendishly challenging for Biden to make good on his vow to take the white supremacist threat far more seriously than Trump ever did. Biden will be tempted to retreat in labeling that threat in the interests of unity. But that would be a retreat on a core rationale of his victorious candidacy.
Personally I'm a bit skeptical of Joe Biden's goal of bringing good people and bad people together, but I think it's a stretch to characterize this dilemma as a clever trap set by Trump.
brooklynite
(93,878 posts)Its easy to see the same happening again. However Biden does seek to address the threat, well likely see another effort by right-wing media to label it a tyrannical attack on conservatism.
This time, retreat is not an option. Trump has aligned himself with various strands of right-wing extremism. He continues to assert the election was stolen from him. He will continue to claim measures against the coronavirus pursued by Biden constitute tyranny (such measures may have partly motivated the plot to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer).
All this will be designed to keep a pro-Trump insurgency as active and as angry as possible. There may be all kinds of overlap between that violent white supremacist activity and continued resistance to the Biden administration and anti-virus measures on the invented grounds that his victory was illegitimate.
Phoenix61
(16,954 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)flailing desperately to get out. The white power ranters went silent during the election, and whatever explanations of their legal situations frightened them into passivity then still exist for most.
As for white supremacists activating mastermind Trump's so-called trap, both nonviolent aggression and violence will create the need and moral duty for Democratic administrations in DC and the states to act. And there will be great support for that, including among many conservatives. Activation will create opportunity and public support for new legislation, legal standards, prosecutions, etc.
Will there be downsides? Of course, as always. But we're not just the nation that elected liberal Democrat Obama twice, but now the nation that elected liberal Democrat Biden and our first female VP, who also happens to be a woman of colors. Our path forward is the arc.
C_U_L8R
(44,897 posts)matt819
(10,749 posts)If they didn't, they'd be out of work.
Maybe the motto of Joe's first term should be, I got this.
It doesn't matter to the RW what Joe does. He could promise rainbows, unicorns, ponies, and ice cream, and they would find a way to make that sound like a violent attack on their rights. He could increase SS payments and expand health care, and these buffoons would still tell him to keep his gubmint hands of their medicare. He will restore US membership in the world community and re-enter probably a score or more of treaties, all of which will make the world a safer place, and they will call him a puppet of George Soros and a socialist communist thug.
You get the idea. Joe and his team of professionals and experts will do what they do and they will do it well. Yes, there will be a messaging challenge, but, again, no matter what the message, the RW will tag the messages as lies, hoaxes, and more. Fuck 'em.
Joe's got this.
Mike 03
(16,616 posts)power, or suffers a humiliation, and someone who respects Democracy assumes power, anything that person does will be seen as an offensive erasure of what the strongman accomplished.
This is really a global issue where anti-democracy parties and powers are gaining in numbers. Look at the shit Angela Merkel has had to put up with in Germany since 2015. It's even a problem in Australia.
The usual suspects, like the Alt Right, Christian Nationalists, racists, will be unhappy.
President Obama actually gave the Christian Right some of the things they demanded and they still despised him (Source: Unholy by Sarah Posner). Biden should not do anything to try to appease these assholes.
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)I can't see this opinion piece. I can't even see who wrote it. Who was it, if you don't mind?
As in most newspapers, the WaPo publishes editorial opinion articles by many people. What they write does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the WaPo. Some of those opinion pieces are pieces of excrement, to be quite frank.
So, who is the author of this one? What do we know about that author? Do tell.
ETA: Greg Sargent is the author. I missed that in the OP. My bad.
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)I'm not familiar with that opinion writer, I'm afraid.
Towlie
(5,308 posts)JHB
(37,133 posts)Chainfire
(17,308 posts)or in cuffs in the custody of Federal Marshalls, he will go quietly.
frazzled
(18,402 posts)the conspiracy-infected white supremacists and other assorted underground (or overground) nutcasestogether with the "good people."
All he has promised is to try to get the middle-ground of left and right semi-rational people to be able to agree on some things that should be evidently necessary, such as a stimulus bill, or climate change measures, or justice reform.
He is not singing Kumbayah, he is not naive, and he doesn't expect concordance on every issue. Nor does he expect the Senate or House Republicans to stop doing most of what they can to obstruct him on many issues. The main thing is to stop caricaturing Biden's position on "unity" as being something like thinking the Republicans will fall into line and agree with him on everything (nor will some of the Democrats), or that he thinks the nutters and racists will go gently into that good night. All he's doing is trying to take down the temperature in the nation. And that's something that really needs to happen. It won't be overnight, and it won't be easy, but it's the outlook that needs to be taken.
Karma13612
(4,527 posts)Caliman73
(11,694 posts)White Supremacy is the elephant (literally with the GOP) in the room. It is pervasive. Clinton had a similar problem, though not to the extent that Biden will.
Remember WACO, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City and other situations where the government responded and created controversy? People don't like to see the government going after White people, even if the White people are doing bad things.
Biden will have a difficult time unifying the country and combating White Supremacy at the same time. Republicans will cast it as persecution and then point to Biden's failure to be a uniter. That is just what they do.