Don’t know about this specific case. But IIRC it is quite normal to have a deadline last chance to withdraw, related to when the ballots are printed. So he likely informally withdrew, but not officially as far as the rules are concerned.

Better dead than red.

A strangely relevant saying, now that the Republican party has allied with Russia.

Self awareness is not his strong suit.

That assumes that Trump was unaware of the hypocrisy, and would have cared if he had realized. That is a false assumption - Trump is a psychopath, literally doesn’t feel bad about breaking moral norms.

It is not like Trump has actual policy positions. Second only to immigration, a main election promise of Trump was “no foreign adventures” - and then went into a war of choice with Iran. A lot of his platform is literally owning the libs - which is mainly done through deliberate hypocrisy.

I especially loathe the formulation

has long faced criticism from wings of his party

As if it is he-said-she-said, whether Fetterman has been a total dick. And then the next moment the press will print Trump’s most outrageous and blatant lies with exactly the same “some disagree” type of formulation.

2/3 majority in the Senate.

Democrats are never going to convince enough Republicans to defect, to reach 67 votes in the Senate. So Fetterman indeed doesn’t matter.

People aren’t going to accept “we tried” again.

I can already see people like coming with criticism like “why didn’t the Democrats win that vote that requires 2/3rds majority? Surely because the Democrats don’t truly care. Both sides are the same.”

…but it was true? Democrats did not have filibuster proof majority, except for a few months or something like that. And that only by the slimmest possible margins, with Joe Lieberman acting as spoiler sabotaging Obamacare.

There is no final victory, just like there is no final defeat.

Yes and no. Democracy require never end vigilance, obviously. But specific dangerous political movements do actually often die. In Europe, political parties die and new are born all the time. The US is an anomality, with the current static 2 party system.

The Republican party was in a very similar position in 2008, with Bush being toxic. Yesterday’s election is in fact being compared with the wipeout in 2008. And yet, the Republican party did not die in 2008.

Bush II campaigned on “no foreign adventures” and “no nationbuilding”, then went into Iraq and did exactly that. Along with all kinds of corruption and incompetence.

Don’t get me wrong, the Republican party absolutely deserves to die - anybody who votes for them is evil and an idiot. But recent history teaches us that pronouncing their demise can be premature.

Which is objectively true. But also kinda besides the point.

There are not really any legal limits on Trump’s pardon power, so what Trump is doing there is technically within the law. In that sense it is quite different from Trump’s fraudulent election fraud claims.

Ah, thanks, I were too lazy to read the article.

The article does still say:

While it’s still a profitable investment, the value of those holdings dropped by about $12 billion on Friday.

So while fuck Republicans in general, and the government taking such a stake is not very free market, it is not completely obvious that taking the stake was stupid. Losing $12 billion on a $9 billion investment is a clue :P.

So fuck the Republican Party in general. But what does this news item have to do with them?