The_Donald vs. Mr_Trump

Presidential race update. Much development in the last few days at Reddit, specifically concerning the subreddit /r/The_Donald which was an important internet component in the Trump victory in the primaries (along with Trump's own Twitter account, and the Drudge Report).

Somehow there has been a coup of the "moderators" on that subreddit. Over a 24-hour span, all the moderators at The_Donald were replaced with new ones, many of whom were brand-new accounts (which looks fishy, but can also be explained by a need to get a fresh account, and to remain anonymous against doxxing).. It is as if The_Donald is suddenly under new management, and no one quite knows who they are.

In response,  apparently a bunch of disgruntled former mods formed a new subreddit, called Mr_Trump and are saying that The_Donald was taken over by social justice warriors and Hillary supporters via internal help from Reddit. They are vowing to restore the original The_Donald against invasion by $Hillary bots.

They claim they are now banned from posting in The_Donald by the new moderators, especially when bringing this very subject up of the "coup".

Meanwhile at the original The_Donald, other posts are claiming that it is the new subreddit, Mr_Trump, that is a product of the paid $Hillary bots who are trying to cause division and knock down The_Donald. The upshot is a sudden civil war between factions of the Trump supporters on Reddit.

Whom to believe?

High stakes stuff. As far as I can tell, nothing much has happened to diminish the energy.

Whoever is running the The_Donald, whether they are for Trump or hate him, haven't changed it that much for the time being, although it does feel different somehow---perhaps a little tamer in tone, focusing on the campaign itself in an almost mainstream sort of way. Yet there still plenty of shitposts that would deeply offend a SJW there. IF SJWs have taken over, they are sitting on their hands for now. Too much intervention would tip their hand and screw things up royally.

A couple things:

1. Obviously we've entered a new phase of the presidential campaign. The primaries are over. The kind of dank meme energy it took to run an insurgency candidacy within the Republican Party to overthrow the Establishment is giving way to a new broader scope of campaign energy for the general election. Actually Trump is no longer running an insurgency candidacy, since he has conquered the Party.  It is still revolutionary perhaps, but no longer an insurgency. The movement is too big to be called that. Reddit was necessary for the primary phase, but probably less so now.

2. This is reminiscent of the attempt by Ted Cruz and the Republican Establishment to win the primaries by getting his own people on the delegate slate in a low-key and stealth fashion, even after losing the vote in the state. Cruz swept the Colorado delegate slate that way on April 6 at the state convention, right after his win in Wisconsin. At the time he was at his high water mark of support. A lot of folks think that was actually the moment he jumped the shark and lost the election. His polls started dropping right after that.Moral: if they blow up Reddit, it just proves Reddit is no longer necessary.

This is the Tweet that the Colorado GOP sent out right after the state convention. It may have been thee exact moment that Cruz lost the election.

3. Trying to take over something by stealth is exactly what the Establishment was supposed to do with the Trump campaign all along, if they had been following their own playbook. In their hubris, they apparently never believed it was possible for him to win, so they never had a plan for it. This is proven by how they are acting now, by even putting forth the idea of running a third party candidate against him. When it was apparent that he might win, they were supposed to start infiltrating his campaign as much as possible. The indications are that this did not happen to any meaningful degree.  There are too many things that the Establishment just can't compromise on. They are still fantasizing about being "Renegades" and starting a Republican Party in Exile, to regain the GOP once Trump loses. They are probably going to be waiting a long time. It is a great gift that they have given us, by self-identifying and refusing to go along with Trump. We know who they are now very clearly. They will regroup no doubt, but they sure look stupid lately. And to think, the whole point of the Establishment originally was to convey competence. Ugly.

Jeb Bush demonstrates the Establishment strategy for coping with Trump's victory.