Given the fact that the GOP currently contains Stubby McBonespurs (a man who thinks you can cure viral infections by chugging a pint of bleach), Moscow Mitch (a man who has almost single handed destroyed any sense of bipartisanship in Washington), Steve King (well known for making racist remarks), Mike Pence (who thought you could “pray away the gay”), and Devin Nunes (who tried to sue a cow), I don’t really think Robin can really do that much to hurt it.
Honestly, the bleach thing stops sounding quite as insane after a while of suffering through all the nonsense.. thank goodness we’ve got alcohol as a less lethal alternative. Lots, and lots of alcohol.. Okay, but it’s still somewhat less lethal, right?
Or, when corona finally stops delaying new releases, mindless TV shows [and other activities suspended or made more difficult by quarantine]! (Seriously though, when am I going to get my Cobra Kai season 3? 🙁 )
..let’s see, what else.. Hmm, I wonder if death by chocolate is a literal thing..
Hey, I wasn’t saying we were going along with the original premise, nor the incoherent “logic” that indicated that drinking bleach would leave you A-OK afterward. I was saying that melting your insides in a particularily gruesome death scene is definitely the sort of culmination this era seems to be aiming for- what with us being caught in some sort of horror-genre apocalyptic narrative and all.
Side-note, why do the people who recommend these things never actually test them themselves? I mean, aside from the fact that the scientific method is entirely foreign to them. Rather, it’s like they’re fully aware that it’s a bad idea, despite their rather dim cognizance, and they’re just throwing it out to see who is stupid enough to fall for it (all for the sake of a few schadenfreude-derived laughs, I’d assume), after which they’ll just take their usual approach, and absolve themselves of any responsability on the grounds of “I never have to take responsability”.
..ugh, the head-pain is back to encourage further indulgence in reasonable bleach substitutes. Okay, guess it’s time for a shotbottle of Scotch!
“Moscow Mitch (a man who has almost single handed destroyed any sense of bipartisanship in Washington)…”
I b’lieve that process was started by Newt (The Newt) Gingrich.
And the GOP’s Southern Strategy turn towards racism. It’s been going on for a long time. You can look at each step in the process and see it as a start or just another step.
Us folk from Northwestern Indiana like to refer to him as Mike “The Electric Fence” Pence since he is largely believed to support conversion therapy which used to use electroshock treatments.
His in-laws gave him the title “Cocaine Mitch” (drug smugglers, among other things). “Moscow Mitch” comes from his shameless indifference to foreign interference in American elections, leading to people referring to him as a Russian asset.
Plus, calling him Moscow Mitch pisses him off no end.
Back in 2016, the intelligence agencies had deduced that Russia was interfering in the election. Obama wanted to put out a joint statement with the congressional Republicans to tell Putin to knock it off, but Moscow Mitch said no. It’s almost like he wanted Russia to interfere. Can’t understand why…
More recently, there have been several bills passed in the house to try to make the 2020 election more secure… But Moscow Mitch blocked some of them. There is also a conflict of interest… A Russian oligarch opened up a business in Kentucky, about the same time Moscow Mitch was pushing for certain sanctions to be lifted on Russia.
I mean, it could be both? She may be surging but may also want to be nice so is going to hope the surge lasts through election so Becky can take a break?
Robin knows Becky doesn’t like her policies. Robin bribed Becky with lots of money so Robin would not have to promise to change her policies. Thus, Robin knows Becky doesn’t want her to win – and didn’t think she could.
Robin was probably hoping Becky would take enough of a break, starting soon enough, that Becky wouldn’t check the polls and realize that Robin was going to win. Because if Becky does realize that, Robin – who has seen firsthand how incredibly effective Becky can be – is afraid that Becky will find some way to sabotage her.
I wonder if Robin has changed her Twitter password yet?
Don’t think Robin is that smart.
Not in the class with Linda and Carole, but yeah, but not the sharpest crayon in the box. (No offense Intended to any wax or paraffin in the Commenters)
I sorry, didn’t mean to offend, some of my friends are CrayolAmerican. My sister dated Grass-Green in high school! Just like people, some Crayons are sharper than others.
Is she really that bad of a person? Yes she’s lazy, and not that smart (and doesn’t really have a great voting record in congress, although I figure that’s more due to her laziness in just voting along with the herd.)
But, in other strips, she did seem to have genuine concern over Becky’s well being (even is she wasn’t that good at showing it). Given that DoA had ToeDad and Blaine, I find it hard to consider her a truly bad person.
She has absolutely zero consideration for the consequences of her actions unless it involves someone she has a pre-established relationship to, who is in her immediate proximity.
..honestly, I’d say that still makes her better than average, woefully enough.
Additionally, she has trouble separating “makes me happy” from “makes you happy”, and even when she does consider other people she horrifically misjudges whether they will like or hate what she does for them.
For instance, her planting herself in Leslie’s place and refusing to leave, bringing a media storm on the poor woman and just generally being stalkery.
Maybe at heart she isn’t a bad person, but many of her actions have been hurtful to a lot of people in ways she hasn’t apologised for or recognised and grown away from yet. Her traits might explain some of her choices and chosen behaviours, but they don’t excuse them. She has always known some of these things were fucked up and wrong too considering she froze when Joyce asked her a question in class before.
This is her, I think, taking a step in the right direction though because from her facial expressions, she seems to genuinely care about putting Becky’s well-being first and keeping her promises. She bought Becky fruit. She made her get off her phone and stop working at getting her elected. She got Dina around to comfort her, because Dina’s pretty dang good at it.
Even if she’s not being the *best* at it, she is showing her more caring side and being selfless, which she doesn’t do often, but when she does, she doesn’t do it in half measures. I mean, she got rid of her entire campaign team for suggesting something she thought was a bridge too immoral for her liking. How many real people do you think would do that? Because I’ll tell you, there are a lot of people that say they don’t condone X that then continue hanging out with people that do X implying they are fine with X as long as the person is nice enough to hang out with.
Robin’s still got a lot of growth to do but she’s taking some of the right steps here.
Becky wouldn’t have to try very hard if Robin cut her loose. Just the news that Robin had cut and run on a campaign manager who just went through what Becky did (not to mention did so much for her campaign) likely would have sunk her chances without Becky having to so much as lift a finger.
Could she though? It would have certainly made the news that she had cut her campaign manager whose dad had just died. That probably would have fairly quickly erased that bump Becky had gotten her. I don’t see kindness here, and I think Robin’s reaction shows pretty effectively that even she doesn’t believe she’s being kind.
At this point, it can be both, and it really wouldn’t make a material difference which it was. She could probably get more out of Becky by trotting her out there and wringing blood out of that stone, so if she was just being cynical and using Becky, she’s not exactly using her to her fullest.
I think Robin is trying to be as close to altruistic as we’ve seen her, but that’s obviously relative.
I’d love to believe that Robin is just doing this out of the good of her heart but my instincts tell me otherwise. Becky seems to generally be of the same mind.
So what gave Robin the sudden surge; was it Becky’s thing about Blaine that caused it?
Since Robin is still Robin, my view is that she’s a genuinely good person. It’s just that her entire career is based on the belief politics is meaningless and it was all for the perks.
Becky and people like Dorothy confuse her as they believe it is actually VERY important.
I’ve known plenty of people who believe like Robin in RL, sadly.
It’s more than that though and not just politics. The whole breaking into Leslie’s house and refusing to leave thing was creepy, even though much of it was played for humor.
She’s incredibly unaware of other people’s feelings or wants and runs roughshod over them, apparently without even noticing. I don’t think it’s malevolent, but it can still be damaging.
It seemed more to me like Robin was being played for humor, but Leslie was reacting to it with distress and horror most of the time. Which just reinforces the ‘not malevolent but still damaging’ – Robin thought she was in an entirely different genre than Leslie.
But just resignation much of the time too. It was weird for me. If I squinted I could see how those actions with different emphasis would be horrible and some people were taking them that way, but the emotional impact of “stalker” wasn’t there.
The surge is caused by people being conspiratal about whether the whole kidnapping events happened or not because people love drama and telling people their stories are fake and didn’t happen based on nothing.
Mine is ‘horrible – but preferably non-contagious though by this point that horse is out of the stable – illness that he lingers through for two to three weeks before death, haunted by the ghosts of the people his actions have killed,’ personally.
Why yes, I am familiar with Angels in America, why do you ask?
Normally I would say Becky is being very pessimistic here and maybe even rude, but Robin is still a conservative, and she’s Robin, and I could totally see something like this happening in the real world. Well maybe not exactly like this what with the whole evil super villain dad thing, but I could def see a republican exploiting a tragedy for political gain. Not even a republican, just a politician in general. It happens. Then publicly giving Becky “time off” to earn more points or save face? Yeah.
No but she could also still choose to drop out of the election at any time. I don’t know anything about her opponent but Robin doesn’t have a great track record. If she wins she’d have to make huge changes to keep any good faith Becky may have built for her which she has no obligation to do.
Why would she drop out of the race? i know everyone reading the comic is super Liberal and all…but the reason Beckys life got better was cause she got a job in an election campaign for the politician who never has double crossed her and has tolerated her using the election money for Beckys personal use…Robin Has honestly done a whole fucking lot for Becky and everyone treats her like crap in the comments for her political application, we don’t even know her policies or anything but she has always done right to the cast and got bongoed from her sister to others. its ridiculosus
This. Robin has acted in pretty harmful ways before. I do think she is acting in true generosity here from her other recent actions for Becky, but like, she does have every right to be skeptical of Robin, she’s a politician, she knows how to be manipulative and how to take advantage of these things. And someone like Becky who hated her previous policies, and got blackmailed into her role, isn’t going to give her the benefit of the doubt that she isn’t being exploitive.
I could see dropping out the race or deleting her Twitter being impulsive actions she might take to prove her sincerity to Becky though.
The fact that you consider not being blatantly evil to be “super liberal” is pretty telling.
Also, Robin immediately went back on her word (granting Becky the use of the apartment and then invading it for her own use), and I don’t know where the suggestion that Becky stole campaign money came from. Do you mean spending her pay?
“Stop judging her by the content of her character!” is also a pretty, uh, bad take.
Robin isn’t a conservative. Robin is a Republican.
Conservatives have principles, which aren’t necessarily evil, or even entirely wrong.
Robin doesn’t have principles, she has a desire for a position of power, which she feeds by pandering to people who do have principles. Until Becky forced a change in direction, she was, like the Republican party as a whole, pandering to those with evil principles, and occasionally throwing a bone to the not evil conservatives.
Some Republicans are truly conservative (some evil (Pence) others not (Schwarzenegger)), but Robin, like the White House Resident Who Shall Not Be Named, lacks any real principles.
That’s just because you can’t apply the same terms to politics in different countries and expect them to mean the same things, because different countries have different politics (and different political divisions.)
It’s not that UK Conservatives are worse than US Conservatives, it’s that they’re two very different things that perhaps superficially resemble each other
Signs point to “no”. We’ve had 53 days of the characters’ lives in 119 months of ours. At that rate ~14 days to the election will take about 2.6 years, so it will be published in about March 2023.
Given this strip, it wouldn’t surprise me if the upcoming time-jump skips all the way past the election. (Which bums me out, because I was really looking forward to seeing them in Halloween costumes for a whole storyline!)
I’d argue a timeskip would resolve a lot of the current plotlines especially ones that maybe don’t warrant full storylines. As you you check in on characters you see how those plots resolved by how things have changed. Did the Browns divorce? Maybe Jacob and Joyce would be dating somehow?! Robin maybe still lost her re election campaign and is now working at a lady’s footlocker and Sydney Yus took over the world!
Also is a timeskip confirmed? I thought it was just speculation. I’d believe it would happen but it would be nice to know it will.
Okay, but I was looking forward to watching the resolution. “You’ll see how they resolve by how things changed and by short check ins” is…kinda what I’m disappointed by. It’ll be interesting to see, but I’ll definitely be sad not seeing how some things shake out over time.
I’m pretty sure he said one on patreon and he’s been teasing winter’s arrival for a while.
I agree though. Maybe he’ll make it work, but it feels like a lot of important character things will either need to be put on hold or resolved off-screen and that’s going to be weird.
I think after this last bit of the storyline it would be a great time to skip forward a bit. A lot of people theorize a time skip. Maybe by just a few months but I could say even a year+ would be doable as a lot shit has happened in just the time to midterms and most people’s lives aren’t this exciting at least n ot in such a condensed amount of time. Like they could fast forward to right after Christmas break and I’d be cool with it.
When someone says it’s “extremely possible” they have certain motivations, chances are they do not, since the speaker is going out of their way to avoid actually claiming to have those motivations.
Becks is now certain that Robin will win, and that is horrifying. Robin considers having non-hateful politics as becoming “some kinda pinko progressive shill.” What will happen now?
It kinda makes sense to say “it’s possible my motives are xyz” because no one believes claimed motives anyway. People are going to decide whether you did something for nice reasons or cynical reasons, and not much you say will change their opinion.
Hmm.
Leaking that you’re taking care of the tuition and housing for the LGBTeen who’s helped you navigate your campaign?
Yeah, that’d win a good number of sympathy points.
In all honesty, I think it’d be kind of crass for Robin to bring up the fact that she’s going to win anyway. I mean, how do you bring that up in this kind of context without undermining the fact that you legitimately care about the other person? The appropriate response in general is “Seriously, don’t sweat it, we can find an alternative” – whether the situation is “We can coast to victory on tragedy points”, “We’re totally doomed because the cultists were big donors to us”, “We really need you right now, but we’d be monsters if we didn’t give you leave”, or “You’re going to pieces, and we can’t rely on you right now”.
If you make it about the job instead of about her, at best you’re going to sound self-centered, and at worst, you’re going to accidentally guilt-trip her into staying. She needs time to heal, not to worry about the problems of a person who she just chanced into working for – not talking about the campaign is a way of respecting that.
Of course, it’s deeply questionable whether Robin was thinking about things in those terms, especially considering her reaction – but at least it was a moment where she accidentally put the other person first.
imo we’ve seen Robin is worried about Becky’s wellbeing in the aftermath of dadcon. and although she shows she cares in a not-necessarily-good way, she does care. /Maybe she’d still ride Becky if she was more worried about polling/ but I’m willing to put my chips in the bucket that says she really wants to do a good thing and is ALSO comfortable with her personal level of safety. So… good job on caring about someone other than yourself??? I believe you Robin???????
Okay, but Robin is a barely-competent administrator with one remaining employee in a local race. How did she get polls in the field this fast? Who is polling this race? Are we seeing a “realignment bounce” from “replacing” her whole staff or are we seeing a real-time temporary social media bump? What is the size of the bump? Is it margin-of-error noise or a substantial shift in the race? Has the apparent rise in the polls had to content with “kidnapping truthers” yet?
Makes no sense to me, I’ve got to admit.
She’s a Republican in a conservative district apparently being swept to victory against a Democrat by adopting far left policies? I get the bounce from being involved in the kidnapping, but the whole premise that she even has a chance makes no sense to me.
And oh god yes there would be kidnapping truthers wouldn’t there.
We know there are kidnapping truthers, because they were claiming Ross’s death was a bid for votes.
Yeah the only way I can even conceive of Robin Actually Winning with her platform pingpong is if a LOT of college students who weren’t otherwise inclined to vote have been swayed, and that’s a pretty big ‘if’.
Becky: hired specifically because her progressive tweets were making Robin popular
Robin: gets more popular from association with Becky
Becky: *surprised pikachu face*
(FWIW I think Becky made the best choices for herself with regard to the Robin situation. But she explicitly bet on Robin’s unpopularity being impossible to overcome when she chose her “two out of three,” and she’s known since practically the day she started that her assumptions may not have been true, so this shouldn’t be overly shocking to her: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/freeloadin/)
I think that, irrespective of whether or not it’s true, Robin is genuinely distressed by the fact that Becky finds it hard to believe that she can ‘just be nice’!
Yeah, because she hasn’t considered: Becky doesn’t trust her, and people that don’t trust you to have their best interests at heart? They see all the ways you could be exploiting them. Even if I think Robin is genuinely trying to be kind here.
One of the best exchanges of last year’s Academy Award winning movie “Parasite” is, to paraphrase because I’m a bit drunk and don’t want to google it, “They nice, even though they’re rich”, “No, they’re nice *because* they’re rich. Money is like an iron, it smooths the creases away.”
In this case? Robin can *afford* to be nice. She got the surge, odds of reelection are very strong, she can relax on that front and do the right thing.
Because a lot of “wrong things” are done because people feel like they “have” to do them…
Robin’s not really like that. She literally got rid of her entire campaign staff, nuking her chances of winning, because they suggested something she found too immoral to follow through on.
Like, I fully believe that Robin is too impulsive and convicted to what few morals she does have to be that kind of person.
Tbh, I do think it’s somewhat possible that Becky’s wrong, Robin’s still behind, but Robin just doesn’t care about being re-elected anymore. Robin strikes me as the type to get bored of working in politics very quickly
Arguably Robin has never really ‘worked’ in politics. She doesn’t do the ‘w’ word and has other people to do that for her. She’s just reaped the rewards and enjoyed all the fun and razzmatazz of being in a high position.
According to the wiki, Walkyverse Robin went on a Cadbury Creme Egg cereal sugar bender and promised to convince Hasbro to make a funeral Padme action figure. Sounds about right.
Dumbiverse Robin was probably just attracted to the power and attention that comes with the office.
Trump is also the type to get bored quickly – hopeful liberals have been saying for years that he never wanted to be President and maybe he’ll quit – but I’m calling it for Trump being in power in 2021, one way or another.
I am NOT a Trump fan, and I am mostly a Democrat fan – but the Republican level of dirty tricks and propaganda will see Trump win. FWIW my ex-wife who’s Venezuelan also thinks so.
We’ll certainly see an unprecedented level of dirty tricks and propaganda, but on the other hand Trump is also unprecedentedly unpopular for an incumbent.
But does the unpopularity matter? Like, the opinion of anybody that isn’t a Republican is irrelevant with regards to how many votes Trump’ll get. If roughly half the country doesn’t vote (as standard) and half of what’s left is Democrat voters, does it matter if his approval rating is 30% or whatever? He’s still getting the 25% that will actually vote for him.
The GOP knows they can’t win the popular vote under normal circumstances. That’s why they aim for the electoral college and disenfranchise every potential opposition voter they possibly can.
He barely squeaked through in 2016 – a handful of votes in a few close states. His numbers aren’t nearly as good now.
He’ll still get most of the Republican base votes, though his support isn’t what it was, even among Republicans. Republican base voters aren’t enough to win the election by themselves anyways. His turnout won’t be as good. Democrats will turn out in much higher numbers and independents look likely to break Democratic.
If it wasn’t for the cheating, I’d be confidently predicting a historic landslide. The unpopularity does really matter.
Ok, but here’s the thing: let’s say his numbers for 2016 were like 50%, and they’re 30% now. But 50% of people didn’t vote for him in 2016 already. If that 20% decrease is coming out of people who were already not going to vote for him, it makes no difference.
It’s like the Democrat primaries in, say, Georgia. Georgia isn’t not going to go Republican, so who the fuck cares what they think about Democrat candidates?
Georgia might not be the best example, because it’s a heavily contested state even after extensive GOP gerrymandering. I mean, even the traditional Republican stronghold Texas is looking tighter than usual this year.
Trump won incredibly tight races in key states that were taken for granted by the Clinton campaign because they’re traditionally left-leaning, after a decades-long campaign of building a negative folklore narrative around her. Trumpism tapped into the wave of fear and hate that had been publicly expressed at least since the 2010 “Tea Party” astroturf movement, and rode it to electoral victory. (Remember how fast you stopped hearing about that?)
Swing voters may have voted for him in 2016 because he was “a political outsider” who “tells it like it is”. Now anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see that both of those statements are bullshit. Maybe this time they might vote for Biden, or write in Vermin Supreme, or they might be disenfranchised and not vote at all.
He has is base of enraged, enabled cult followers who will vote for him no matter what, but there aren’t enough of them to elect him with only their support. They’re a fraction of roughly half the population. The question is, has he alienated too many swing voters? Probably, so they’re digging deep into the bag of dirty tricks to tip the scale in their favor. Closing polling places, hamstringing the USPS, electronic-only voting, misinformation campaigns…
I’m more worried about the integrity of the process than turnout this year. Every state should be using machine-readable paper ballots that can be automatically and manually tallied.
It’s not just or even mostly the counting of ballots, but suppression. The name of game has always been voter suppression. Actual vote changing may happen, but it’s far harder and much riskier. Suppression is basically legal and happens constantly.
He won a tight race by an incredibly slim margin last time. The electorate has swung against him and not just in solidly red or blue states.
I don’t really understand your argument. If the numbers were 50% in 2016 and 30% now, how does that change come out of people who weren’t going to vote for him? He got those votes last time. That’s how he won.
Are you assuming all the change comes from non-voters?
Yeah. In a horrifying contrast with the elections that I am used to, US elections are routinely a chaotic schmozzle of which the outcomes are strongly influenced by it having been made impossible or hopelessly difficult for most citizens to vote, inconsistent voting and counting methods, and other third-world shenanigans. This time in addition there are widespread problems with polling-station closures, social distancing in queues, deliberate underfunding of the postal system, and agitprop directed towards “the Second Amendment people”. Who will bet that no riot police are sent in to clear the streets of queueing voters? A lot of states’ results are going to end up contested. Its very likely that people will not agree who won the election.
He’s not going to tap out, because that’s something only “losers” do. Remember, the most important things in the world to him are status and prestige, and he’ll do anything to hoard them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he ran again in 2024 (assuming he doesn’t win 2020).
If he’s out of office, he’ll be fighting to stay out of jail. If not, he’ll probably be happy running grifts on his fanatic supporters. That’s what the whole running for President gig was supposed to be about in the first place.
You say that like he won’t keep grifting them for money to “defend against these phony bigly unfair no good very bad lawsuits”. Grifters gonna grift.
The question I think we should be asking is “where does the GOP go from here?” He gleefully became the centerpiece of a Republican cult of personality, and the mainstream of the party gladly rode those coattails in the beginning. Over time it became obvious they can’t control him for their purposes, and now the tide is turning and he’s dragging them all down with him. Even if they ran a different candidate, they’d only split their vote between their candidate and Cheeto the write-in, and lose spectacularly thanks to the first-past-the-post two party system they love so much.
I think he’ll be their albatross for the rest of his life. Good.
Yeah, tapping out means you lose, and the election could be a overwhelming landslide and he’d still be claiming he actually won and lost because of election fraud (yes, he’ll be claiming he won and lost at the same time, and nobody will bat an eye at it).
I wouldn’t be surprised if he ran in 2024 even if he DOES win 2020. The thing about laws is that they only apply to you if you either let them or if you can be forced to let them apply to you, and as long as the Republicans control either the House or the Senate the latter isn’t happening to a Republican.
If he wins in 2020, he may well run again. Or he may just not bother and simply stay in office anyway. He’s already talking about delaying elections. Another 4 years and even he might be able to consolidate power enough.
If he loses though, he’s going to jail. Or at least spend the next years fighting off government investigations of everything he did in office and corrupt as he is, without Barr and control of the DoJ protecting him it’ll all come out.
Lol, no. There’s going to be exactly zero prosecution of anything he did while in office. Like, zero of it. Every US president is a consumate criminal and none of them is going to let THAT door be opened.
He won’t be prosecuted for official actions, even if they’re war crimes or whatever it is you think makes all presidents “consumate criminals”. He’ll be prosecuted for all the stuff he’s done and is doing that breaks the normal rules. Just like Congresscritters get away with all kinds of stuff, then they get caught with freezers full of bribe money and get busted.
The SDNY is just waiting to throw the book at him, even if the Washington feds don’t.
He thinks it’ll happen. That’s why he’s so desperate.
But hey, if they’re all such criminals anyway, it doesn’t really matter. Obama was a criminal. Trump is a criminal. Biden will be a criminal. It doesn’t matter right? They’re all crooks. Who cares which one is on top?
See, you say “war crimes or whatever” as if war crimes were small potatoes, but they’re just small potatoes to YOU, because Americans are prepertrating them instead of being the target of them.
Just like in 2016 when you lot were all crying about foreign interference because some Russians said some mean things about Clinton on Twitter while you spent pretty much your entire national existence doing literal violent coups throughout the Middle East and the Americas to boost your bottom line.
Or now that you’re appalled that US paramilitary are throwing people into unmarked vans when that’s exactly what you’ve been doing all over the world.
How’s Henry Kissinger doing, btw? You know, the dude who had mercenary units stomp baby skulls into the ground in front of their mothers? He in jail yet? No, wait, my bad, he’s good friends with former Secretary of State Clinton who, when running for president, said she’d heed his advice.
Bad shit isn’t bad shit just when it’s being done to you. It’s still bad shit when you’re doing it to other people.
I was trying to draw a distinction between policy crimes and personal corruption. No President is going to be arrested for war crimes, because that’s US policy. As you say, they’re all in it.
I think Trump will go to jail for his personal corruption and some of his other internal abuses of power. He’ll likely get a pardon on his wait out the door – possibly simply from himself, but there’s state stuff that doesn’t cover.
But hey, if you think Trump is just a run of the mill US criminal president, I don’t know what to say.
People be fair to Robin, she is a politician and all but she has always been good to Becky and with “robins annoying sister that hates her twhos name I forgot”
I think Dracke means Roz, which is honeestly good enough reason for me to hunt them down because Roz is one of the best people in the comic and pretty much the only one that I’d trust to hold political office.
Take it easy on Robin. It’s time for that whole arc to end. She says adios to Becky, so that Becky can continue as a character. If Becky had to remain as Robin’s campaign advisor, we would be seeing nearly another year of that, which would be boring. Two weeks in comic = a year. Now we can move forward without Robin or politics taking over the narrative. Robin’s not thoughtless, she’s just drawn (written) that way. With any luck she’ll be out of frame for a considerable time.
Robin is thoughtless. Often. It’s one of her character traits that she does many things without a whole lot of consideration for how it affects others. It doesn’t make her heartless or incapable of having moments where she isn’t though. This is definitely one of her more thoughtful moments.
she already has power.
It’s not the power that will make her better. It’s the connections with Becky (and Leslie?) and the realization that she’s actually part of the group she was hurting.
That doesn’t work for everyone. Some are cynical enough to hide themselves and keep hurting their own group for power. I think Robin is more oblivious than cynical and she’s certainly not going to be able to hide that she’s queer if she ever figures it out herself.
So this is the first time Robin and Amber-as-Amber have appeared together in the same place in this universe … and only the second time if you include Amazi-Girl.
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Sounds about right
Becky should acknowledge Robin is so incompetent that she’s likely to run the GOP into the ground.
The damage would not be confined to the GOP.
/me gestures vaguely in every direction around.
Not if they can do anything about it.
Consider yourself upvoted.
Given the fact that the GOP currently contains Stubby McBonespurs (a man who thinks you can cure viral infections by chugging a pint of bleach), Moscow Mitch (a man who has almost single handed destroyed any sense of bipartisanship in Washington), Steve King (well known for making racist remarks), Mike Pence (who thought you could “pray away the gay”), and Devin Nunes (who tried to sue a cow), I don’t really think Robin can really do that much to hurt it.
I had to look up that last one, and found out it wasn’t even a real cow he tried to sue, it was a fictional cow
I honestly don’t know if that makes it better or worse
Why not both?
Honestly, the bleach thing stops sounding quite as insane after a while of suffering through all the nonsense.. thank goodness we’ve got alcohol as a less lethal alternative. Lots, and lots of alcohol.. Okay, but it’s still somewhat less lethal, right?
Or, when corona finally stops delaying new releases, mindless TV shows [and other activities suspended or made more difficult by quarantine]! (Seriously though, when am I going to get my Cobra Kai season 3? 🙁 )
..let’s see, what else.. Hmm, I wonder if death by chocolate is a literal thing..
Nah, the bleach thing started as an antivax thing that could ‘cure’ autism, so it’s still bonkers. Particularly its jump over to viruses.
Hey, I wasn’t saying we were going along with the original premise, nor the incoherent “logic” that indicated that drinking bleach would leave you A-OK afterward. I was saying that melting your insides in a particularily gruesome death scene is definitely the sort of culmination this era seems to be aiming for- what with us being caught in some sort of horror-genre apocalyptic narrative and all.
Side-note, why do the people who recommend these things never actually test them themselves? I mean, aside from the fact that the scientific method is entirely foreign to them. Rather, it’s like they’re fully aware that it’s a bad idea, despite their rather dim cognizance, and they’re just throwing it out to see who is stupid enough to fall for it (all for the sake of a few schadenfreude-derived laughs, I’d assume), after which they’ll just take their usual approach, and absolve themselves of any responsability on the grounds of “I never have to take responsability”.
..ugh, the head-pain is back to encourage further indulgence in reasonable bleach substitutes. Okay, guess it’s time for a
shotbottle of Scotch!“Moscow Mitch (a man who has almost single handed destroyed any sense of bipartisanship in Washington)…”
I b’lieve that process was started by Newt (The Newt) Gingrich.
Don’t forget the erosion of executive standards and rampant spending that both kicked into high gear around 1981.
And the GOP’s Southern Strategy turn towards racism. It’s been going on for a long time. You can look at each step in the process and see it as a start or just another step.
Honestly, a vote for Robin would bring a voice of normalcy back to the party, at this point.
Us folk from Northwestern Indiana like to refer to him as Mike “The Electric Fence” Pence since he is largely believed to support conversion therapy which used to use electroshock treatments.
I have never understood the Moscow Mitch nickname, considering his wife’s family connections, shouldn’t it be Peking Mitch?
His in-laws gave him the title “Cocaine Mitch” (drug smugglers, among other things). “Moscow Mitch” comes from his shameless indifference to foreign interference in American elections, leading to people referring to him as a Russian asset.
Plus, calling him Moscow Mitch pisses him off no end.
Back in 2016, the intelligence agencies had deduced that Russia was interfering in the election. Obama wanted to put out a joint statement with the congressional Republicans to tell Putin to knock it off, but Moscow Mitch said no. It’s almost like he wanted Russia to interfere. Can’t understand why…
More recently, there have been several bills passed in the house to try to make the 2020 election more secure… But Moscow Mitch blocked some of them. There is also a conflict of interest… A Russian oligarch opened up a business in Kentucky, about the same time Moscow Mitch was pushing for certain sanctions to be lifted on Russia.
Has it been established yet in Dumbiverse if Robin can achieve superhuman achievements if she consumes mass amounts of sugar?
reality proved otherwise
Ooh, up early tonight.
Por que no los dos?
SureJan.gif
😀
I mean, it could be both? She may be surging but may also want to be nice so is going to hope the surge lasts through election so Becky can take a break?
True.
The real problem is that Robin could have just said that, and didn’t.
“Yeah! I know! But… well, you already won it for me. Huge surge, no way I’m gonna lose now. You did good kid – take a break. You earned it.”
Same sentiment, but it acknowledges Becky’s contribution, however accidental.
But then, this is DoA Robin so… **vague shruggy motions**
Well Becky hates the idea she’s helped Robin because she doesn’t have the commitment to supervillainy she needs.
She needs to unleash her hate before her journey to the Dark Side can be complete.
At least then she can get cookies.
Robin knows Becky doesn’t like her policies. Robin bribed Becky with lots of money so Robin would not have to promise to change her policies. Thus, Robin knows Becky doesn’t want her to win – and didn’t think she could.
Robin was probably hoping Becky would take enough of a break, starting soon enough, that Becky wouldn’t check the polls and realize that Robin was going to win. Because if Becky does realize that, Robin – who has seen firsthand how incredibly effective Becky can be – is afraid that Becky will find some way to sabotage her.
I wonder if Robin has changed her Twitter password yet?
Don’t think Robin is that smart.
Not in the class with Linda and Carole, but yeah, but not the sharpest crayon in the box. (No offense Intended to any wax or paraffin in the Commenters)
As a third-generation CrayolAmerican, I take offense to this remark.
I sorry, didn’t mean to offend, some of my friends are CrayolAmerican. My sister dated Grass-Green in high school! Just like people, some Crayons are sharper than others.
I am disappointed, I was expected a bunch of Marine jokes.
Aquamarine, maybe.
I mean she could’ve been a sleaze and cut Becky the second she didn’t need her anymore so I’m not gonna tolerate any Robin slander.
She’s still a very not-good person who’s done a lot of not-goodness.
Is she really that bad of a person? Yes she’s lazy, and not that smart (and doesn’t really have a great voting record in congress, although I figure that’s more due to her laziness in just voting along with the herd.)
But, in other strips, she did seem to have genuine concern over Becky’s well being (even is she wasn’t that good at showing it). Given that DoA had ToeDad and Blaine, I find it hard to consider her a truly bad person.
She has absolutely zero consideration for the consequences of her actions unless it involves someone she has a pre-established relationship to, who is in her immediate proximity.
..honestly, I’d say that still makes her better than average, woefully enough.
Additionally, she has trouble separating “makes me happy” from “makes you happy”, and even when she does consider other people she horrifically misjudges whether they will like or hate what she does for them.
For instance, her planting herself in Leslie’s place and refusing to leave, bringing a media storm on the poor woman and just generally being stalkery.
Maybe at heart she isn’t a bad person, but many of her actions have been hurtful to a lot of people in ways she hasn’t apologised for or recognised and grown away from yet. Her traits might explain some of her choices and chosen behaviours, but they don’t excuse them. She has always known some of these things were fucked up and wrong too considering she froze when Joyce asked her a question in class before.
This is her, I think, taking a step in the right direction though because from her facial expressions, she seems to genuinely care about putting Becky’s well-being first and keeping her promises. She bought Becky fruit. She made her get off her phone and stop working at getting her elected. She got Dina around to comfort her, because Dina’s pretty dang good at it.
Even if she’s not being the *best* at it, she is showing her more caring side and being selfless, which she doesn’t do often, but when she does, she doesn’t do it in half measures. I mean, she got rid of her entire campaign team for suggesting something she thought was a bridge too immoral for her liking. How many real people do you think would do that? Because I’ll tell you, there are a lot of people that say they don’t condone X that then continue hanging out with people that do X implying they are fine with X as long as the person is nice enough to hang out with.
Robin’s still got a lot of growth to do but she’s taking some of the right steps here.
If she cut Becky loose, Becky would definitely find a way to make her lose.
Even if she keeps Becky on but Becky thinks it looks like Robin’s going to win, Becky might try to sabotage it, and Robin knows this.
She’s hoping Becky will stay on the payroll and take such a break that she does not check the polls till after the election.
Becky is too smart for that.
Becky wouldn’t have to try very hard if Robin cut her loose. Just the news that Robin had cut and run on a campaign manager who just went through what Becky did (not to mention did so much for her campaign) likely would have sunk her chances without Becky having to so much as lift a finger.
Could she though? It would have certainly made the news that she had cut her campaign manager whose dad had just died. That probably would have fairly quickly erased that bump Becky had gotten her. I don’t see kindness here, and I think Robin’s reaction shows pretty effectively that even she doesn’t believe she’s being kind.
GOD I hope she’s just being nice but I’ve learned that with Willis, hope is a filthy lie he made up to keep us from rioting. 😛
That’s an excellent way to describe hopes associated with this comic.
At this point, it can be both, and it really wouldn’t make a material difference which it was. She could probably get more out of Becky by trotting her out there and wringing blood out of that stone, so if she was just being cynical and using Becky, she’s not exactly using her to her fullest.
I think Robin is trying to be as close to altruistic as we’ve seen her, but that’s obviously relative.
Congratulations, you’re fired!
I’d love to believe that Robin is just doing this out of the good of her heart but my instincts tell me otherwise. Becky seems to generally be of the same mind.
So what gave Robin the sudden surge; was it Becky’s thing about Blaine that caused it?
Since Robin is still Robin, my view is that she’s a genuinely good person. It’s just that her entire career is based on the belief politics is meaningless and it was all for the perks.
Becky and people like Dorothy confuse her as they believe it is actually VERY important.
I’ve known plenty of people who believe like Robin in RL, sadly.
It’s more than that though and not just politics. The whole breaking into Leslie’s house and refusing to leave thing was creepy, even though much of it was played for humor.
She’s incredibly unaware of other people’s feelings or wants and runs roughshod over them, apparently without even noticing. I don’t think it’s malevolent, but it can still be damaging.
It seemed more to me like Robin was being played for humor, but Leslie was reacting to it with distress and horror most of the time. Which just reinforces the ‘not malevolent but still damaging’ – Robin thought she was in an entirely different genre than Leslie.
But just resignation much of the time too. It was weird for me. If I squinted I could see how those actions with different emphasis would be horrible and some people were taking them that way, but the emotional impact of “stalker” wasn’t there.
The surge is caused by people being conspiratal about whether the whole kidnapping events happened or not because people love drama and telling people their stories are fake and didn’t happen based on nothing.
The alternative, or course, is Robin doesn’t change.
Please stop killing character development in favor of goofy things like “realpolitik”, Becky.
Yeah, I accept that Robin literally can’t fully see Amber because she’s partially out of frame.
Being Genre Savvy isn’t always an advantage.
ugh
I told
You twice
I was only trying to be nice
Only trying to be nice–oh
I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On
Robin is Robin is Robin.
I dunno, just looking at Robin’s expressions here I legitimately believe that she’s actually just trying to help.
She is pretty bad at hiding her real intentions, huh…?
But she also got a poll surge.
Between the near-fourth-wall thing in the first panel and Becky’s expression in the last… this one’s one of my favorite strips, right now.
._.
Honestly, despite what Robin may or may not gain, this is a pretty sweet deal for Becky.
In this comic, weirder things have happened.
I really like Becky’s expressions in the last two panels. Just a little bit different from what we usually see from her.
Unimpressed Becky is new best facial expression of Dumbing Of Age.
Clearly Blaine and Toedad have done the most heinous thing they could have done; gotten Robin re-elected.
I’m hoping that Robin will be reinvented as not Palin or Trump or even Rubio but the Indiana AOC.
She can convert to Democrat after being elected.
Mind you, the requirement is to toss Mitch McConnell down a reactor shaft.
“Mind you, the requirement is to toss Mitch McConnell down a reactor shaft.“
So,…. the kid gloves treatment. O.k. I’ll help.
So, you fall in the “Mauled by a pack of wild hyenas, then tossed into a vat of lemon juice” crowd?
Mine is ‘horrible – but preferably non-contagious though by this point that horse is out of the stable – illness that he lingers through for two to three weeks before death, haunted by the ghosts of the people his actions have killed,’ personally.
Why yes, I am familiar with Angels in America, why do you ask?
Don’t need to ask. Your awesomeness is self evident. Your comments are ones I read for depth.
Awww, thanks! ^^
Normally I would say Becky is being very pessimistic here and maybe even rude, but Robin is still a conservative, and she’s Robin, and I could totally see something like this happening in the real world. Well maybe not exactly like this what with the whole evil super villain dad thing, but I could def see a republican exploiting a tragedy for political gain. Not even a republican, just a politician in general. It happens. Then publicly giving Becky “time off” to earn more points or save face? Yeah.
Robin can’t really be blamed for exploiting this. It happened at her.
If anything I think she might have learned something–not that I’d bet on it.
No but she could also still choose to drop out of the election at any time. I don’t know anything about her opponent but Robin doesn’t have a great track record. If she wins she’d have to make huge changes to keep any good faith Becky may have built for her which she has no obligation to do.
Why would she drop out of the race? i know everyone reading the comic is super Liberal and all…but the reason Beckys life got better was cause she got a job in an election campaign for the politician who never has double crossed her and has tolerated her using the election money for Beckys personal use…Robin Has honestly done a whole fucking lot for Becky and everyone treats her like crap in the comments for her political application, we don’t even know her policies or anything but she has always done right to the cast and got bongoed from her sister to others. its ridiculosus
Other than the bill targeting the civil right of gay people referenced way back in one of her classroom visits. Gay people like Becky.
And she certainly hasn’t always done right to the cast – her forcing her way into Leslie’s apartment and refusing to leave wasn’t “right”.
I’m not actually as harsh on her as many here, mostly because I think she’s very likely to change, but don’t whitewash her problems either.
This. Robin has acted in pretty harmful ways before. I do think she is acting in true generosity here from her other recent actions for Becky, but like, she does have every right to be skeptical of Robin, she’s a politician, she knows how to be manipulative and how to take advantage of these things. And someone like Becky who hated her previous policies, and got blackmailed into her role, isn’t going to give her the benefit of the doubt that she isn’t being exploitive.
I could see dropping out the race or deleting her Twitter being impulsive actions she might take to prove her sincerity to Becky though.
She also apparently supports some pretty racist immigration policies. It’s why Sal doesn’t like her.
The fact that you consider not being blatantly evil to be “super liberal” is pretty telling.
Also, Robin immediately went back on her word (granting Becky the use of the apartment and then invading it for her own use), and I don’t know where the suggestion that Becky stole campaign money came from. Do you mean spending her pay?
“Stop judging her by the content of her character!” is also a pretty, uh, bad take.
Dina’s giant plush dinosaur was apparently bought with campaign money – “Baby’s first campaign violation“.
I withdraw that objection.
Robin isn’t a conservative. Robin is a Republican.
Conservatives have principles, which aren’t necessarily evil, or even entirely wrong.
Robin doesn’t have principles, she has a desire for a position of power, which she feeds by pandering to people who do have principles. Until Becky forced a change in direction, she was, like the Republican party as a whole, pandering to those with evil principles, and occasionally throwing a bone to the not evil conservatives.
Some Republicans are truly conservative (some evil (Pence) others not (Schwarzenegger)), but Robin, like the White House Resident Who Shall Not Be Named, lacks any real principles.
If ever there was a post showing the differences between US COnservatives and UK Conservatives – this is it….
No UK Conservative has principles…
It’s more the difference between small-c conservative and big-C Conservative.
That’s just because you can’t apply the same terms to politics in different countries and expect them to mean the same things, because different countries have different politics (and different political divisions.)
It’s not that UK Conservatives are worse than US Conservatives, it’s that they’re two very different things that perhaps superficially resemble each other
That’s an amazing expression, Becky. Thank you Willis
I mean, Becks, you’ve been enabling her this entire time
Will it be Election Day in-comic in time for the 2022 mid-terms?
Signs point to “no”. We’ve had 53 days of the characters’ lives in 119 months of ours. At that rate ~14 days to the election will take about 2.6 years, so it will be published in about March 2023.
Given this strip, it wouldn’t surprise me if the upcoming time-jump skips all the way past the election. (Which bums me out, because I was really looking forward to seeing them in Halloween costumes for a whole storyline!)
Same. I’m a little disappointed there’s a time skip coming – I wanted to see resolution on a lot of the current plot lines.
I’d argue a timeskip would resolve a lot of the current plotlines especially ones that maybe don’t warrant full storylines. As you you check in on characters you see how those plots resolved by how things have changed. Did the Browns divorce? Maybe Jacob and Joyce would be dating somehow?! Robin maybe still lost her re election campaign and is now working at a lady’s footlocker and Sydney Yus took over the world!
Also is a timeskip confirmed? I thought it was just speculation. I’d believe it would happen but it would be nice to know it will.
Okay, but I was looking forward to watching the resolution. “You’ll see how they resolve by how things changed and by short check ins” is…kinda what I’m disappointed by. It’ll be interesting to see, but I’ll definitely be sad not seeing how some things shake out over time.
I’m pretty sure he said one on patreon and he’s been teasing winter’s arrival for a while.
It’s going to just be a couple days like previous time skips. The tease is just an early snow storm. 🙂
I agree though. Maybe he’ll make it work, but it feels like a lot of important character things will either need to be put on hold or resolved off-screen and that’s going to be weird.
I think after this last bit of the storyline it would be a great time to skip forward a bit. A lot of people theorize a time skip. Maybe by just a few months but I could say even a year+ would be doable as a lot shit has happened in just the time to midterms and most people’s lives aren’t this exciting at least n ot in such a condensed amount of time. Like they could fast forward to right after Christmas break and I’d be cool with it.
But dressing up for Halloween! Second only to Solstice/Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Festivus/&c. Dress up Dina! Pirate Dina 1st place!
When someone says it’s “extremely possible” they have certain motivations, chances are they do not, since the speaker is going out of their way to avoid actually claiming to have those motivations.
Becks is now certain that Robin will win, and that is horrifying. Robin considers having non-hateful politics as becoming “some kinda pinko progressive shill.” What will happen now?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/5footturkey/
Hey, at least Dina’s threat still stands
It kinda makes sense to say “it’s possible my motives are xyz” because no one believes claimed motives anyway. People are going to decide whether you did something for nice reasons or cynical reasons, and not much you say will change their opinion.
Hmm.
Leaking that you’re taking care of the tuition and housing for the LGBTeen who’s helped you navigate your campaign?
Yeah, that’d win a good number of sympathy points.
At least Becky got something out of it.
But do those sympathy points translate into votes? And do they outweigh the right wing base votes she’d lose over the same reasons?
Countdown to Becky’s face journey becoming an avatar:
3
2…
Your avatar is art
I swear, it’s nuts how Becky’s rapidly become the most mature character in this comic.
Well, at the moment she’s being measured against Robin. That’ll make anyone look good.
Nobody’s gonna apologize to Roz, but don’t worry, she won’t forget to say she told us so anyways.
That last expression…
Perfection
I’m happy for Becky. She did her job and she should be proud of it.
Yes, you created the Death Star but the important thing is it WORKS.
Did she design in a small thermal exhaust port leading directly to the main reactor though? That goes a way to being forgivable.
She forgot to, sadly.
This comment thread needs more references to the end of Bridge On The River Kwai.”
Panel 4 you know if you make that face too long it’ll stick like that, just saying
In all honesty, I think it’d be kind of crass for Robin to bring up the fact that she’s going to win anyway. I mean, how do you bring that up in this kind of context without undermining the fact that you legitimately care about the other person? The appropriate response in general is “Seriously, don’t sweat it, we can find an alternative” – whether the situation is “We can coast to victory on tragedy points”, “We’re totally doomed because the cultists were big donors to us”, “We really need you right now, but we’d be monsters if we didn’t give you leave”, or “You’re going to pieces, and we can’t rely on you right now”.
If you make it about the job instead of about her, at best you’re going to sound self-centered, and at worst, you’re going to accidentally guilt-trip her into staying. She needs time to heal, not to worry about the problems of a person who she just chanced into working for – not talking about the campaign is a way of respecting that.
Of course, it’s deeply questionable whether Robin was thinking about things in those terms, especially considering her reaction – but at least it was a moment where she accidentally put the other person first.
imo we’ve seen Robin is worried about Becky’s wellbeing in the aftermath of dadcon. and although she shows she cares in a not-necessarily-good way, she does care. /Maybe she’d still ride Becky if she was more worried about polling/ but I’m willing to put my chips in the bucket that says she really wants to do a good thing and is ALSO comfortable with her personal level of safety. So… good job on caring about someone other than yourself??? I believe you Robin???????
LOL Becky is so expressive!!
S’expressive.
Okay, but Robin is a barely-competent administrator with one remaining employee in a local race. How did she get polls in the field this fast? Who is polling this race? Are we seeing a “realignment bounce” from “replacing” her whole staff or are we seeing a real-time temporary social media bump? What is the size of the bump? Is it margin-of-error noise or a substantial shift in the race? Has the apparent rise in the polls had to content with “kidnapping truthers” yet?
Political nerds want to know!
Makes no sense to me, I’ve got to admit.
She’s a Republican in a conservative district apparently being swept to victory against a Democrat by adopting far left policies? I get the bounce from being involved in the kidnapping, but the whole premise that she even has a chance makes no sense to me.
And oh god yes there would be kidnapping truthers wouldn’t there.
We know there are kidnapping truthers, because they were claiming Ross’s death was a bid for votes.
Yeah the only way I can even conceive of Robin Actually Winning with her platform pingpong is if a LOT of college students who weren’t otherwise inclined to vote have been swayed, and that’s a pretty big ‘if’.
“far left policies”?
At least by Indiana standards.
In addition to the LGBTQ stuff, Becky was tweeting about free college tuition and universal basic income.
Becky: hired specifically because her progressive tweets were making Robin popular
Robin: gets more popular from association with Becky
Becky: *surprised pikachu face*
(FWIW I think Becky made the best choices for herself with regard to the Robin situation. But she explicitly bet on Robin’s unpopularity being impossible to overcome when she chose her “two out of three,” and she’s known since practically the day she started that her assumptions may not have been true, so this shouldn’t be overly shocking to her: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/freeloadin/)
I don’t think she’s surprised. Disappointed yes but surprised no.
I don’t know. The idea that progressive tweeting makes a Republican politician more likely to be elected is so foreign to me I can’t even compute.
The best part is still Dino
I think that, irrespective of whether or not it’s true, Robin is genuinely distressed by the fact that Becky finds it hard to believe that she can ‘just be nice’!
she needs to meet malaya to confirm whether or not she is the biggest fakey
Nah, Malaya is about as poor a judge of character as Billie.
Yeah, because she hasn’t considered: Becky doesn’t trust her, and people that don’t trust you to have their best interests at heart? They see all the ways you could be exploiting them. Even if I think Robin is genuinely trying to be kind here.
So? Question: moment of growth? Or moment of Double-Down?
It’s both.
One of the best exchanges of last year’s Academy Award winning movie “Parasite” is, to paraphrase because I’m a bit drunk and don’t want to google it, “They nice, even though they’re rich”, “No, they’re nice *because* they’re rich. Money is like an iron, it smooths the creases away.”
In this case? Robin can *afford* to be nice. She got the surge, odds of reelection are very strong, she can relax on that front and do the right thing.
Because a lot of “wrong things” are done because people feel like they “have” to do them…
I don’t think Robin really works like that though. She’s pretty transparent.
Robin’s not really like that. She literally got rid of her entire campaign staff, nuking her chances of winning, because they suggested something she found too immoral to follow through on.
Like, I fully believe that Robin is too impulsive and convicted to what few morals she does have to be that kind of person.
You’re a politician, Robin. ‘Nuff said.
Tbh, I do think it’s somewhat possible that Becky’s wrong, Robin’s still behind, but Robin just doesn’t care about being re-elected anymore. Robin strikes me as the type to get bored of working in politics very quickly
Arguably Robin has never really ‘worked’ in politics. She doesn’t do the ‘w’ word and has other people to do that for her. She’s just reaped the rewards and enjoyed all the fun and razzmatazz of being in a high position.
Tbh even in shortpacked the only reason she worked in politics was the house I believe.
Dunno whybshe got into politics in this universe but I doubt it’s for actual political reasons
According to the wiki, Walkyverse Robin went on a Cadbury Creme Egg cereal sugar bender and promised to convince Hasbro to make a funeral Padme action figure. Sounds about right.
Dumbiverse Robin was probably just attracted to the power and attention that comes with the office.
Trump is also the type to get bored quickly – hopeful liberals have been saying for years that he never wanted to be President and maybe he’ll quit – but I’m calling it for Trump being in power in 2021, one way or another.
I am NOT a Trump fan, and I am mostly a Democrat fan – but the Republican level of dirty tricks and propaganda will see Trump win. FWIW my ex-wife who’s Venezuelan also thinks so.
We’ll certainly see an unprecedented level of dirty tricks and propaganda, but on the other hand Trump is also unprecedentedly unpopular for an incumbent.
It’s going to be messy.
But does the unpopularity matter? Like, the opinion of anybody that isn’t a Republican is irrelevant with regards to how many votes Trump’ll get. If roughly half the country doesn’t vote (as standard) and half of what’s left is Democrat voters, does it matter if his approval rating is 30% or whatever? He’s still getting the 25% that will actually vote for him.
The GOP knows they can’t win the popular vote under normal circumstances. That’s why they aim for the electoral college and disenfranchise every potential opposition voter they possibly can.
No argument there.
He barely squeaked through in 2016 – a handful of votes in a few close states. His numbers aren’t nearly as good now.
He’ll still get most of the Republican base votes, though his support isn’t what it was, even among Republicans. Republican base voters aren’t enough to win the election by themselves anyways. His turnout won’t be as good. Democrats will turn out in much higher numbers and independents look likely to break Democratic.
If it wasn’t for the cheating, I’d be confidently predicting a historic landslide. The unpopularity does really matter.
Ok, but here’s the thing: let’s say his numbers for 2016 were like 50%, and they’re 30% now. But 50% of people didn’t vote for him in 2016 already. If that 20% decrease is coming out of people who were already not going to vote for him, it makes no difference.
It’s like the Democrat primaries in, say, Georgia. Georgia isn’t not going to go Republican, so who the fuck cares what they think about Democrat candidates?
Georgia might not be the best example, because it’s a heavily contested state even after extensive GOP gerrymandering. I mean, even the traditional Republican stronghold Texas is looking tighter than usual this year.
Trump won incredibly tight races in key states that were taken for granted by the Clinton campaign because they’re traditionally left-leaning, after a decades-long campaign of building a negative folklore narrative around her. Trumpism tapped into the wave of fear and hate that had been publicly expressed at least since the 2010 “Tea Party” astroturf movement, and rode it to electoral victory. (Remember how fast you stopped hearing about that?)
Swing voters may have voted for him in 2016 because he was “a political outsider” who “tells it like it is”. Now anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see that both of those statements are bullshit. Maybe this time they might vote for Biden, or write in Vermin Supreme, or they might be disenfranchised and not vote at all.
He has is base of enraged, enabled cult followers who will vote for him no matter what, but there aren’t enough of them to elect him with only their support. They’re a fraction of roughly half the population. The question is, has he alienated too many swing voters? Probably, so they’re digging deep into the bag of dirty tricks to tip the scale in their favor. Closing polling places, hamstringing the USPS, electronic-only voting, misinformation campaigns…
I’m more worried about the integrity of the process than turnout this year. Every state should be using machine-readable paper ballots that can be automatically and manually tallied.
Have you seen the “Republicans for Voldemort” Tee-shirts?
It’s not just or even mostly the counting of ballots, but suppression. The name of game has always been voter suppression. Actual vote changing may happen, but it’s far harder and much riskier. Suppression is basically legal and happens constantly.
He won a tight race by an incredibly slim margin last time. The electorate has swung against him and not just in solidly red or blue states.
I don’t really understand your argument. If the numbers were 50% in 2016 and 30% now, how does that change come out of people who weren’t going to vote for him? He got those votes last time. That’s how he won.
Are you assuming all the change comes from non-voters?
Yeah. In a horrifying contrast with the elections that I am used to, US elections are routinely a chaotic schmozzle of which the outcomes are strongly influenced by it having been made impossible or hopelessly difficult for most citizens to vote, inconsistent voting and counting methods, and other third-world shenanigans. This time in addition there are widespread problems with polling-station closures, social distancing in queues, deliberate underfunding of the postal system, and agitprop directed towards “the Second Amendment people”. Who will bet that no riot police are sent in to clear the streets of queueing voters? A lot of states’ results are going to end up contested. Its very likely that people will not agree who won the election.
He’s not going to tap out, because that’s something only “losers” do. Remember, the most important things in the world to him are status and prestige, and he’ll do anything to hoard them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he ran again in 2024 (assuming he doesn’t win 2020).
If he’s out of office, he’ll be fighting to stay out of jail. If not, he’ll probably be happy running grifts on his fanatic supporters. That’s what the whole running for President gig was supposed to be about in the first place.
You say that like he won’t keep grifting them for money to “defend against these phony bigly unfair no good very bad lawsuits”. Grifters gonna grift.
The question I think we should be asking is “where does the GOP go from here?” He gleefully became the centerpiece of a Republican cult of personality, and the mainstream of the party gladly rode those coattails in the beginning. Over time it became obvious they can’t control him for their purposes, and now the tide is turning and he’s dragging them all down with him. Even if they ran a different candidate, they’d only split their vote between their candidate and Cheeto the write-in, and lose spectacularly thanks to the first-past-the-post two party system they love so much.
I think he’ll be their albatross for the rest of his life. Good.
Yeah, tapping out means you lose, and the election could be a overwhelming landslide and he’d still be claiming he actually won and lost because of election fraud (yes, he’ll be claiming he won and lost at the same time, and nobody will bat an eye at it).
I wouldn’t be surprised if he ran in 2024 even if he DOES win 2020. The thing about laws is that they only apply to you if you either let them or if you can be forced to let them apply to you, and as long as the Republicans control either the House or the Senate the latter isn’t happening to a Republican.
If he wins in 2020, he may well run again. Or he may just not bother and simply stay in office anyway. He’s already talking about delaying elections. Another 4 years and even he might be able to consolidate power enough.
If he loses though, he’s going to jail. Or at least spend the next years fighting off government investigations of everything he did in office and corrupt as he is, without Barr and control of the DoJ protecting him it’ll all come out.
Lol, no. There’s going to be exactly zero prosecution of anything he did while in office. Like, zero of it. Every US president is a consumate criminal and none of them is going to let THAT door be opened.
He won’t be prosecuted for official actions, even if they’re war crimes or whatever it is you think makes all presidents “consumate criminals”. He’ll be prosecuted for all the stuff he’s done and is doing that breaks the normal rules. Just like Congresscritters get away with all kinds of stuff, then they get caught with freezers full of bribe money and get busted.
The SDNY is just waiting to throw the book at him, even if the Washington feds don’t.
He thinks it’ll happen. That’s why he’s so desperate.
But hey, if they’re all such criminals anyway, it doesn’t really matter. Obama was a criminal. Trump is a criminal. Biden will be a criminal. It doesn’t matter right? They’re all crooks. Who cares which one is on top?
See, you say “war crimes or whatever” as if war crimes were small potatoes, but they’re just small potatoes to YOU, because Americans are prepertrating them instead of being the target of them.
Just like in 2016 when you lot were all crying about foreign interference because some Russians said some mean things about Clinton on Twitter while you spent pretty much your entire national existence doing literal violent coups throughout the Middle East and the Americas to boost your bottom line.
Or now that you’re appalled that US paramilitary are throwing people into unmarked vans when that’s exactly what you’ve been doing all over the world.
How’s Henry Kissinger doing, btw? You know, the dude who had mercenary units stomp baby skulls into the ground in front of their mothers? He in jail yet? No, wait, my bad, he’s good friends with former Secretary of State Clinton who, when running for president, said she’d heed his advice.
Bad shit isn’t bad shit just when it’s being done to you. It’s still bad shit when you’re doing it to other people.
I was trying to draw a distinction between policy crimes and personal corruption. No President is going to be arrested for war crimes, because that’s US policy. As you say, they’re all in it.
I think Trump will go to jail for his personal corruption and some of his other internal abuses of power. He’ll likely get a pardon on his wait out the door – possibly simply from himself, but there’s state stuff that doesn’t cover.
But hey, if you think Trump is just a run of the mill US criminal president, I don’t know what to say.
At the very least, I think Robin has a guilty conscience.
She is a politician. Ikea can’t keep up with the demand for closets the politicians need to hide skeletons in.
Pfft…now I’m just imagining that Becky’s eyebrow just keeps going up above the stratosphere.
So we’re just ignoring a politician saying SEXTREMELY? Okay, I see how it is.
#makedistrictninegreatagain
Becky has seen all the bullshit. Becky knows the bullshit. The bullshit cannot wear a fancy hat and call itself Stevo. Becky sees you and Becky knows.
People be fair to Robin, she is a politician and all but she has always been good to Becky and with “robins annoying sister that hates her twhos name I forgot”
Robin doesn’t seem to hate Riley, but she’s not above using her as a campaign prop either.
I think Dracke means Roz, which is honeestly good enough reason for me to hunt them down because Roz is one of the best people in the comic and pretty much the only one that I’d trust to hold political office.
Intentionally referring to the wrong younger sister was an attempt at humor.
Oh no, I’ve ruined a joke. D8
I’m sorry. 8(
Appropriate gravatars are appropriate, I guess?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Could do a lot worse than, “Hey great work, have two weeks paid vacation as a reward”.
Take it easy on Robin. It’s time for that whole arc to end. She says adios to Becky, so that Becky can continue as a character. If Becky had to remain as Robin’s campaign advisor, we would be seeing nearly another year of that, which would be boring. Two weeks in comic = a year. Now we can move forward without Robin or politics taking over the narrative. Robin’s not thoughtless, she’s just drawn (written) that way. With any luck she’ll be out of frame for a considerable time.
Robin is thoughtless. Often. It’s one of her character traits that she does many things without a whole lot of consideration for how it affects others. It doesn’t make her heartless or incapable of having moments where she isn’t though. This is definitely one of her more thoughtful moments.
On a scale of possible to probable, what are the chances Rep. DeSanto actually starts to be a better person up on Capitol Hill?
Historically, giving power to people doesn’t make them better people. If anything, it does the opposite.
she already has power.
It’s not the power that will make her better. It’s the connections with Becky (and Leslie?) and the realization that she’s actually part of the group she was hurting.
That doesn’t work for everyone. Some are cynical enough to hide themselves and keep hurting their own group for power. I think Robin is more oblivious than cynical and she’s certainly not going to be able to hide that she’s queer if she ever figures it out herself.
Sixth-frame Becky… man, I wish I could do that with my face.
That is a massively impressive eyebrow raise.
C’mon Becky. Robin has surely only good intentions.
Tweet: Dolly made a swear….
Me: *imagines Ms. Parton wearing a triangle grin mask*
The other option is that now she’s somehow doing so badly that it doesn’t matter and she doesn’t want to admit it.
uit it’s probably not that
I mean, even if Becky is right, it means she earned a well earned timely vacation.
So this is the first time Robin and Amber-as-Amber have appeared together in the same place in this universe … and only the second time if you include Amazi-Girl.
Becky’s expression is the BEST.