2 Comments
22 hrs ago·edited 22 hrs ago

The accountability model fails when a large part of the appeal of a candidate is that the candidate, and his policies, are essentially transgressive. We have seen in the past couple of weeks new appalling behaviours by the candidate that have served (if one can judge at all) only to deepen his appeal to his base, and also to broaden it. It is surely the case, too, that everybody underestimated the power of familiarity and branding that comes with running for the third time on a more or less pure personality play. Unwillingness to engage with any policy issue on a rational level (a preference for allegations about cats and dogs, in fact) is another clear part of the attraction. How off-putting for this candidate and the electorate to have to engage with a new opponent, whose market penetration would never be more than 100-days deep. And, to boot, a prosy ex-prosecutor with fine ideals but rather shallow arguments. Finally, our man digging up a whole new stratum of rural obscurity (in what used to be known as the boonies) is something that might have been predicted, but certainly couldn't be measured in advance (because those are not people that answer the phone to pollsters or anybody else much).

Expand full comment

Once again, you have put the case for the unspoken nuances so delicately and so well. Thank you for articulating what we feel.

Perhaps the real issue is he should have been held accountable immediately after the insurrection, and after each and every action every time. Instead, he was allowed to act with complete impunity. This favour is never granted to any other person. Now the climate chaos will be left to accelerate which will impact every individual on this planet.

Expand full comment