History sometimes repeats, but you have to look at the underlying patterns. The political landscape in the US is very different from 2016. Obama's political policies were relatively popular. Both Hillary and Biden are in the same camp as Obama. In isolation, the majority of Americans at least find Hillary's politics acceptable on most issues, but policy doesn't sway all voters. With low information, low education voters tone sells far better than policy and Trump has the tone white, poorly educated Americans wanted to hear.
I forced myself to listen to a Trump speech twice. The first time I listened to the words (as I normally do with these things) and he came across as an incoherent idiot. But then I listened again and just paid attention to the cues he was putting off. I listened like I would to a speech in another language. Trump sounded confident, certain, powerful. People who truly think tend to pause a lot when talking off the cuff. You see it in Elon as well as Barack Obama. Trump never does. When he makes a verbal error he plows on with the attitude that he meant to say that. To people who are listening to the words, it's further evidence that he's nuts, but to those who aren't listening to the words, he sounds very certain.
Poorly educated whites in this country have seen their fortunes decline since the 1980s and while other groups who have seen difficult times have gotten attention, whites have been told to suck it up. The term "white privilege" really riles them up because they certainly don't feel any privilege. Trump came along and promised them the hail Mary pass to put them at least back in the game and they took it.
Hillary Clinton is not a likeable person, so while lots of people were willing to vote for her, few did so with any enthusiasm. Bill Maher talked about her early slogan "are you ready for Hillary" as "yes, the same way I'm ready for a vaccine. I don't want it, but let's get it over with."
Interference by the Russians sowed dissent on the left that drove off some people who would have voted for Hillary. Republican interference in many states kept turnout down among populations that heavily vote Democratic (the Detroit area in Michigan had an unusually low turnout thanks to Republican interference). The Democrats had a candidate nobody really liked and the Republicans had a buffoon nobody thought would win. A lot of people didn't vote or did a protest vote because they figured Hillary was going to win.
A lot of people thought Trump wouldn't be that bad, but then he turned out to be awful in just about every way.
Rick Wilson who knows a lot about how elections work has made the point that there is a large cadre of voters who will crawl over broken glass to vote against Donald Trump and that did not exist at all in 2016. I've been watching polls and looking at the details that aren't reported in the top line poll results. Many polls ask people how likely they are to vote for Donald Trump in 2020. Pretty consistently 52-54% say they will definitely under no circumstances vote for Donald Trump.
News leaked this week that Trump's campaign did an internal poll in 17 states Trump must win and found he was losing in 14 of them, some by big margins. His campaign is looking for other states to open up fronts. They are hoping to shift from the upper Midwest strategy to a Colorado/New Mexico strategy, but that's pretty remote. Both states have fairly large Hispanic populations and both have been fairly consistent Democratic states the last few election cycles.
Trump remains popular among Republicans, but the Republican party has become a cult and has shrunk a lot since 2016. Among independents, Trump is not popular and his stock is shrinking fast.
Trump and his campaign are especially afraid of Biden because Biden appeals the most to the swing state voters. He can appeal to working class whites the same way Bill Clinton did. Just about anybody but Biden is more popular among the Democratic hopefuls in the blue states, but those states will be won by just about any Democratic nominee. In most swing states some other Democrats poll decently, but Biden polls the strongest.
There is a difference between the Democratic insiders and the rest of the population who vote Democratic. A lot of minority Democrats are socially more conservative than the more vocal Democrats on social media. At this point someone familiar and isn't promising any wild changes is comforting to Democratic leaning voters who have PTSD from the Trump administration. A lot of people in the middle don't want sweeping new changes right now, they want government that's sane and predictable and at honest sometimes again.
As others have said, I don't think Saudi Arabia is the only player who wants a US-Iranian war. The Israelis have had a secret alliance with SA for several years now. The Iranians have given at least some help to the regime in Syria and Hezbola and the Israelis would like to see Iran taken out.
The Sunni/Shia fight has been going on since Mohamed died and Iran and Saudi Arabia are the hubs of those two sects. But most of the Sunni countries are aligned with SA in their hatred of Iran, though most aren't willing to do anything about it.
The oil price theory is a possibility. A friend in the oil biz pointed out over 10 years ago that Saudi Arabia was showing all the signs of running out of the easy to produce oil and they were making moves to start secondary production techniques.
Another player in all this who stands to benefit from higher oil prices is Russia. Russia is in financial crisis because of the corruption combined with low oil prices. Russia is also paranoid and does not want the US to have any more presence on it's doorstep, but it would be a win-win for Putin if the US and Iran got into a devastating war that weakened both countries.
The Saudis have have had a hand in the tanker attacks, but it's possible the Mossad did the wet-work.
It's all speculation, but whenever you look at these things, you have to look at motive. Only a leader as nuts and stupid as Trump would attack tankers in the Gulf in the position Iran is in now. And while the country is run by religious zealots, they have not demonstrated any extreme craziness in statecraft, nor stupidity.
Pompeo came out and definitively said it was Iran without producing any proof along with claims that Iran was behind many other attacks in the region, many of which were definitively determined to be someone else. There is a very clear move on the part of this administration to start a war.
It would be incredibly stupid for the US. The US military is not prepared for any conflict right now. Because the Iraq and Afghanistan wars lasted so much longer than planned and US carriers had to be on station much longer than expected, the entire fleet got worn out. Half the US carrier fleet is down for maintenance right now.
The US has made a lot of noise about the USS Abraham Lincoln heading to the Gulf, but that's actually a smaller presence than the US has had in the region for most of the last 30 years. Since the first Gulf war in 1991 there has been at least 1 US carrier group near the Persian Gulf at all times. It's notable that because of the shortage of carriers, the Gulf was left uncovered for about a month when the Stennis left station before the Lincoln arrived.
The US Army has consistently fallen short on its recruitment goals for the last several years. People don't want to get blown up in a pointless war in Afghanistan. That means the Army is understaffed by about 50,000 troops now. That's about 10% under-strength. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have bled the Army dry. They are a spent force that should be rebuilding right now.
Even at full strength the Army is not strong enough to take on Iran. The rule of thumb for occupations is 20 troops per 1000 population if there is no active resistance. All but 1 successful occupation in the last century was at least that level (Japan after WW II was the exception). To occupy Iran would require around 1.6 million troops (Iran's population is 81 million). More then 3X the size of the budgeted US Army.
Trying to go in with fewer troops would be a repeat of the Iraq invasion with a much larger, much better prepared, and much better motivated enemy. Iran has three ethnic groups that should never be sharing a country and the US was able to exploit those divisions. Iran doesn't have those internal divisions. The religious zealots running the country aren't popular, but few want an outside invader to topple the regime and would fight an invasion.
A US invasion of Iran would see some initial success, but would probably go pear shaped fairly quickly.
I do agree with you that Saudi Arabia's fault lines are showing too. The Whabist/House of Saud alliance was always one of convenience. And other forces are coming into play now. Yemen has become Saudi Arabia's Vietnam. They can't win and they can't figure out how to end it.
I don't know who it was, it may have been multiple players working together, but the least likely candidate is Iran.
Any individual can be right sometimes and wrong others, so I don't know about this particular case, but my SO has been following Abramson for close to 2 years because his legal analysis of the Trump situation has been spot on. She's an attorney too and has been sorting the proverbial wheat from chaff of legal arguments about what's been going on. She regards his analysis near the top of the pack.
I'd like to see his analysis backing up his claim it was the UAE, but he will probably make his case soon if he hasn't already.
I don't look at Twitter much, I find it an annoying format to try and follow. It, like many social media platforms, are designed for short pithy remarks rather than in depth analysis. Abramson has made it work for him with multiple posts on a topic, but it makes it hard to read IMO.
