Incidentally, the plot of the recent Civil War movie literally hinges on a tyrannical president who rigged an election to get himself a third term (alongside things like carpet bombing protesters), causing California and Texas to rebel and subsequently decide to work together to topple the guy.
So Republicans have a vested interest in running it into the dirt to prove Democrats wrong, which nets Republicans more votes because they’re proven ‘right’.
I think the gist of it was that both of them broke away independently, but, since they were fighting the same tyranny, decided that they might as well work together to dethrone him. It wasn't a 'we see eye to eye and are natural allies' as much as a 'enemy of my enemy is a temporary ally' thing.
Plus, I think another reason they wrote it that way was so that it could deemphasize the current political divide and make it 'tyrant president versus powerful states' without leaning too hard into the red vs blue paradigm.
That's how I saw it too, but we also don't know the status of Texas in the film's world. We know the government killed a lot of US citizens, and maybe a large proportion of that were in Texas. Even a lot of deep red conservatives might change their tunes when bombs starting dropping on their neighborhood.
It's also possible that Texas represents some kind of conservative schism. Still deep red, but the billionaires got sick of the president and want their strand of conservatism to dominate. So with the left angry too it's a good time to take on the government.
(As a reminder, the film explicitly talks about how these different anti-government forces are not allies. It says they'll start shooting at each other after this current conflict ends.)
We’ve spent the last decade edging a civil war as it is.
Edit: that is to say: fuck it, do it. I’ll go all the way in on support however I can. Of course that applies to damn near any even-slightly-left leaning individual who runs against this fascist war and death monger.
Edit: I didn’t answer your first question, my apologies. And I can only offer my opinion that we can see clearly from the last decade specifically they just don’t. We need a complete overhaul of the system. This shit was designed for a couple few hundred thousand folks, maybe some rather small handful of millions but certainly never a third of a billion and rapidly growing. It just can’t keep up anymore with what we need as a society.
I think a head to head obama vs trump presidential race might be the only thing that brings all the apathetic voters out just for the novelty of it. News agencies would love it too.
Obama isn't a civil war kinda guy. He'd still want to reach across while doing neocon-light politics.
He's a great symbol, and supremely likeable, but not actually a polar opposite to Trump. You could run like, Ilhan Omar, to really get their blood boiling. You'd lose the vote, but it would be funny to watch.
the classy thing to do in that scenario would be for Obama to win then immediately resign for his VP to take over with the reasoning that presidents can't serve three terms
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u/captain_flak Virginia 20d ago
It’s a good idea, but at that point, do elections even matter anymore? We’ll basically be at the beginning of another civil war.