NBC News' Sahil Kapur delves into the false promise of a magical thinking "Republican epiphany" after the corrupt and vindictive Malignant Fascist lost in 2020. He and Trumpism not only returned in 2024, but they promised revenge for those that tried to hold them accountable for their crimes:
"Seven years ago, on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, Joe Biden boldly proclaimed that Republicans would have an 'epiphany' after they lost the 2020 election — they would move on from President Donald Trump and work cooperatively with Democrats.
Many Democrats bought into it then. But after Trump stormed back into the White House with a popular-vote win and an Electoral College thumping four years later, Democratic voters are abandoning that vision in favor of a more combative style of politics.
'Every elected official who believed that has either retired, lost or is about to lose,' said Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz, who named her firm Fight Agency after the GOP sweep in 2024.
At a campaign stop on May 14, 2019, Biden told voters, 'The thing that will fundamentally change with Donald Trump out of the White House — not a joke — is you will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends.' [ed.: they were never really your "friends," Joe, as you eventually found out]
The Republican epiphany “did not happen,” Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg deadpanned in an interview.
Contrary to Biden’s prediction, she said, 'in the 2020 election, it’s pretty clear that a big part of the why Trump lost was because of his handling of Covid. It was not necessarily a rejection of Trump or Trumpism. And I think that’s partly what we see in 2024 — is that there were folks who never actually rejected that.'
Democratic voter attitudes rapidly shifted to seeking a confrontational posture toward the GOP, similar to what Republican voters had demanded of their party since 2009." (our emphasis)
Biden brought with him into the White House people of a like mind, trusting MAGAts to turn from their cult and embrace compromise, not seeing who they were dealing with. People like the timid and ineffective Attorney General Merrick Garland, who declined to act with any sense of urgency over the January 6 seditious conspiracy until Congress stepped forward and showed him the way nearly 2 years after the riot. He then stepped back and let Special Counsel Jack Smith take the heat, and now he's with a prestigious law firm in D.C. still flying under the radar.
There must be a reckoning with the remaining Dem believers in an epiphany among Republicans of the kind that Biden imagined. That's started with grass roots rejection of a number of "centrist / establishment" Dems during the current primary season (Platner vs. Mills in Maine) at the State and local level. After what we've seen, we can't afford to trust the MAGA movement / cult to do anything but undermine democracy and try to create a one-party system.
(photo: Should have watched your back)
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