After two years of Biden though, anyone capable of rational thought should recognize that Trump is the lesser evil. If they can't? That says to me that they're the sort of person that the media wouldn't have to put much effort into convincing them of anything.
Except in the eyes of most of America, Trump is the
greater evil. It wasn’t Biden who decided to hold a rally and rile it up enough to try and storm the Capitol, or scheme to come up with shady legal theories and no actual evidence of material fraud (no, really, every time his lawyers were invited to submit their claims, they declined because, unlike shooting one’s mouth off at a press conference or on social media, lying in court proceedings carries actual criminal sanctions).
Regardless of what you personally might think of the 2020 election, most Americans feel it was fair and that Trump’s antics were not only ridiculous but downright awful. So, given a choice between a senile moron and a moron who thinks trying to subvert an electoral outcome he doesn’t like, they’re going to vote for the senile guy 10 times out of 10.
I will respectfully disagree. Shaprio has a pretty bad track record of calling these things. I like the guy and I listen to him, but I don't often agree with him and his predictions rarely pan out. Mastriano and Oz weren't defeated due to Trumps endorsements.
They won the primaries due to it, but they were defeated because they were shit tier candidates. Speaking as someone who lives in the PA media market and has a lot of friends in said state, Mastriano was the lunatic who won because of 1) his base, 2) an opposition split among 12 other candidates, and 3) getting massive funding from the
Democrats
The GOP, mainly Mitch McConnell essentially starved their campaigns of money, resources and support.
That’s a complete lie, at least as far as the general election (you know, the important one) is concerned. In Pennsylvania, for example. McConnell and his aligned PACs spent $57 million to boost Mastriano and Oz. Trump spent a total of $3 million. Wisconsin? McConnell spent $24 million, Trump…$0. Georgia? $38 million by McConnell, $3.4 million (no that isn’t a typo, it’s $3,400,000) by Trump. New Hampshire, $16 million by McConnell vs nothing by Trump (again). Nevada? McConnell spent $26 million, Trump spent $2 million. Oh, and McConnell also dumped in $32 million vs $2.3 million (again, not a typo) by Trump.
So if you want to screech about a certain GOP figure not supporting GOP candidates…well, it’s not McConnell you should be blaming. He’s hoarding the money for himself and doesn’t give a shit about anyone else, not truly. McConnell may have his disagreements but he’s at least smart enough to put party over petty personal beefs.
Trump isn't Poison to the Republican Party. He's the one who has inspired us to win and continues to do so. DeSantis is a rising star in the party and many see him as the rightful successor to Trump when its all said and done.
Trump managed to fluke a victory because 1) Nobody actually knew how he’d behave once in office and had to take the job seriously and 2) because he was up against the worst possible candidate the Democrats could have chosen, and even then, if Jill Stein hadn’t been a spoiler on the left, Trump likely would have lost.
Since then, well let’s see:
2018: Party loses the House but gains in the Senate, but a lot of Trump-backed candidates lose their bids, at least those in competitive seats.
2020: Trump loses to a guy who barely campaigned and is very clearly not all there, because Trump is enough of an asshole that people are sick of him.
2021: The night before a runoff election for Georgia’s two Senate seats (where winning just
one would give the GOP the majority and the Republicans have always won), Trump bitches about his own loss rather than actually trying to boost either Perdue or Loeffler and making a case for why a Democrat trifecta is a bad thing, thus depressing voter turnout among Republicans and enabling Ossoff and Warnock to win.
2022: Trump tries to actively sabotage GA governor Brian Kemp because Kemp wouldn’t tolerate his shit in 2020 by backing David Perdue…who gets his ass handed to him by Kemp. Not one to realize when he’s lost, Trump then sends out endorsements of Stacey Abrams because he’d rather see a Democrat in office than a fellow Republican simply because Kemp hurt his feelings. Kemp then proceeds to beat Abrams by about 8-9 points…while Herschel Walker, who Trump endorsed for Senate, is headed for a runoff because he ran so far behind Kemp. Meanwhile Oz and Mastriano both went down in flames, because a crazy guy and a carpetbagging RINO (in the real sense of the term, i.e. someone whose instincts are generally left wing) aren’t going to cut it against a popular state AG and a guy with brain damage in a swing stage like Pennsylvania.
Trump may have encouraged people to be more combative, sure, and his outreach to minorities is a plus, but Trump himself has a track record of being a loser. Despite your repeated refusal to accept reality, the truth is that Trump is just that awful.
75% of the population of the USA thinks the country is going in the wrong direction.
Brandon has the lowest approval rating of any president in history.
The economy is experiencing huge inflation and maybe even a recession.
You'd think that most people would be willing to elect anything but the Demorats?
Normally, yes. However, given a choice between one group of idiots who are mostly sane by the standards of American politics (i.e., no more than the usual amount of sleaze one expects) versus a second group of idiots whose most prominent candidates are outright lunatics whose ideas aren’t fundamentally much different except fealty to the most despised man in America? They’ll stick with the current crop. Nor is this the first time it’s happened, either: see 1998.
I don't see how anyone can think that DeSantis is part of the establishment. He has struck against the Democrats at every opportunity and turned Florida into a bastion of conservative populist values. A lot of the actual establishment still hates DeSantis, remember how Cheney and Kitzinger sneered that DeSantis was just as evil as Trump as well as all those attacks by the media painting him as a fascist dictator.
Every action DeSantis has taken has been to advance populist conservative goals. And I'm going to need a lot more than speculation to convince me he's dirty somehow.
Also, using the term "establishment" as a cheap insult rather than as a descriptor debases the word of meaning. Within a few years I can easily see the word "establishment" becoming as meaningless as the words "racist" or "fascist" have become.
As far as I can tell based on context, “establishment” and “uniparty” really mean “Actually believes in the current constitutional order, like separation of powers, the idea that losers accept the results of elections they don’t like, and generally try to govern rather than use their office to settle personal feuds” with some disagreements over things like election/ballot integrity (like no mass vote by mail but rather, if you want to vote, make the effort yourself) or powers of states vs the feds, etc. The current system may not be perfect, sure, but the fundamentals are.
People going on about the establishment are really generally bitching about the fact that their nihilism and extreme cynicism are not accepted by most Americans, and rather engage in critical thinking and serious reflection (and therefore have to admit that they might not be right about everything), they simply whine and say things that are at best misleading and at worst outright lies so their egos don’t get bruised.