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U.S. Presidential Primaries 2024!


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On 8/27/2023 at 2:11 AM, Angrybk said:

The most enraging thing for me is that I would actually vote for any of the Republican nominees except for Ramaswamey (dumbass tech bro) DeSantis (hitched his wagon to some anti-woke bullshit that most people don't care about) and Trump (obvious reasons). Pence, Haley, Scott and Christie would be fine! They've all got solid creds and backgrounds. 

I quite like Christie. For one thing he doesnt talk to journalists like they are all assholes who should carry his water for him.

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2 hours ago, seahawk said:

The amazing thing is that Biden and Trump only have a chance if they fight each other. The really amazing thing is that the Republicans seem to be unwilling to nominate someone or anyone with a better chance of winning than Trump. Or in other words any candidate likely to easily win against Biden has no chance to win the primaries.

We have covered this before in this thread: in 2020, the Democrats were worried desperately about electability. That’s why joe won.

 

Republicans don’t acknowledge they lost the last time, so unlike losing in 2016, there is nothing to contemplate.

 

if you google “electability “ and 2016, you will see a huge amount of Democratic angst. But the GOP in its own mind never lost 2020, so sending in the same loser makes perfect sense.

Edited by Josh
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4 hours ago, Josh said:

We have covered this before in this thread: in 2020, the Democrats were worried desperately about electability. That’s why joe won.

 

Republicans don’t acknowledge they lost the last time, so unlike losing in 2016, there is nothing to contemplate.

 

if you google “electability “ and 2016, you will see a huge amount of Democratic angst. But the GOP in its own mind never lost 2020, so sending in the same loser makes perfect sense.

Yeah, the 2020 Dem nomination story was pretty fascinating and sort of ironic -- Sanders was probably going to win the nom (and probably get slaughtered by Trump) until moderate Black Democrats (Clyburn etc.) rallied around Biden because they saw him as the most electable. 

I do think that the fact that Haley, Christie, Pence, etc. would all probably have a better chance of beating Biden than Trump would is even more ironic, but I don't understand all the commentary blaming "The GOP" for not somehow putting the kibosh on Trump. What could they do, press a magic button or something? 

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2 hours ago, Angrybk said:

Yeah, the 2020 Dem nomination story was pretty fascinating and sort of ironic -- Sanders was probably going to win the nom (and probably get slaughtered by Trump) until moderate Black Democrats (Clyburn etc.) rallied around Biden because they saw him as the most electable. 

I do think that the fact that Haley, Christie, Pence, etc. would all probably have a better chance of beating Biden than Trump would is even more ironic, but I don't understand all the commentary blaming "The GOP" for not somehow putting the kibosh on Trump. What could they do, press a magic button or something? 

They could have stopped feeding the troll at any given point, at least after Jan 6th. They removed him from office, or at least consistently, publicly held him accountable for instigating a riot. Look at how people like Lindsey or even McConnel have changed their tune or fallen silent ever since - they went from declaring him a menace and singularly culpable to, in Lindsey's case, saying the GOP can't live without him. Republican leaders keep on making the mistake of thinking they can utilize Trump's voters without Trump and/or thinking that Trump will go away without some kind of direct confrontation. They thought post Jan 6th that he'd be unpopular enough that they wouldn't have to hold him accountable for anything and he would just go away. Here we are watching DeSantis try to fight Vivek for second place like dogs for table scraps, just to be in a position to capitalize on the unlikely situation of Trump having a KFC induced heart attack.

Edited by Josh
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2 hours ago, Angrybk said:

I do think that the fact that Haley, Christie, Pence, etc. would all probably have a better chance of beating Biden than Trump would is even more ironic, but I don't understand all the commentary blaming "The GOP" for not somehow putting the kibosh on Trump. What could they do, press a magic button or something? 

I think the bolded bit is the key. Thanks to election law changes enacted to eliminate 'smoke filled rooms' the Republicans have to abide by the results of the primaries/caucuses and they have no way to prevent anyone from declaring and running as a member of the party.   Campaign finance reform and the rise of the super pacs and small dollar direct fundraising have further gutted either party's ability to exert any real control over candidates or potential candidates.

A good demonstration of this occurred in an Illinois election for some minor elected office.  It was in an area where no Republican had won a race in 5 or 6 decades.  A self declared white supremist entered the primary and the State Party realized what was going on too late to enter a candidate.  Because of this the white supremist ran unopposed and became the official Republican candidate. There was nothing the Republican party could do to remove him as the Republican candidate on the election ballot.  It made a brief embarrassing splash in the national press.

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6 minutes ago, Harold Jones said:

I think the bolded bit is the key. Thanks to election law changes enacted to eliminate 'smoke filled rooms' the Republicans have to abide by the results of the primaries/caucuses and they have no way to prevent anyone from declaring and running as a member of the party.   Campaign finance reform and the rise of the super pacs and small dollar direct fundraising have further gutted either party's ability to exert any real control over candidates or potential candidates.

A good demonstration of this occurred in an Illinois election for some minor elected office.  It was in an area where no Republican had won a race in 5 or 6 decades.  A self declared white supremist entered the primary and the State Party realized what was going on too late to enter a candidate.  Because of this the white supremist ran unopposed and became the official Republican candidate. There was nothing the Republican party could do to remove him as the Republican candidate on the election ballot.  It made a brief embarrassing splash in the national press.

It is certainly true that the Republican party can't magically change its own polls, but it is also true that almost the entire republican party, including almost every potential presidential candidate, has been covering for Trump in a stupid and senseless effort to pick up his voters. When he is indicted for an open and shut classified docs case, most everyone else says "politically motivated" when in any other election cycle, that candidate would have his head shoved below the water by everyone else in the running. The GOP and the conservative media has incubated and enabled Trump ever since he won in 2016; they have never challenged him on his faults or problems in even the shallow way left wing media occasionally criticizes Biden. NOTHING Trump does is ever his fault; it is always someone elses.

Edited by Josh
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49 minutes ago, Josh said:

It is certainly true that the Republican party can't magically change its own polls, but it is also true that almost the entire republican party, including almost every potential presidential candidate, has been covering for Trump in a stupid and senseless effort to pick up his voters. When he is indicted for an open and shut classified docs case, most everyone else says "politically motivated" when in any other election cycle, that candidate would have his head shoved below the water by everyone else in the running. The GOP and the conservative media has incubated and enabled Trump ever since he won in 2016; they have never challenged him on his faults or problems in even the shallow way left wing media occasionally criticizes Biden. NOTHING Trump does is ever his fault; it is always someone elses.

Most of them called Trump out on his faults in the 2016 election and after Jan. 6 (there's dozens of examples) but they run up against the fact that Trump is wildly popular with Republicans _because_ he's Trump, and every scandal basically makes him more popular with R voters or at least doesn't really hurt him. Again, I really think you can't blame Trump's popularity on the media or the GOP machine or whatever, R voters genuinely prefer him because of his personality and what he (says he) stands for. 

Which of course ends up with the other R nominees being stuck in this trap where you can't say bad things about Trump because you'll piss off the R constituency, but if you don't say bad things about Trump then what's the point in even running, since R voters will just say "oh, good point, I'm voting for Trump then!" The only logical reasons to run against Trump are if you're going heroic kamikaze like Christie, or angling for a Cabinet position like Ramaswamy. 

 

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1 hour ago, Harold Jones said:

I think the bolded bit is the key. Thanks to election law changes enacted to eliminate 'smoke filled rooms' the Republicans have to abide by the results of the primaries/caucuses and they have no way to prevent anyone from declaring and running as a member of the party.   Campaign finance reform and the rise of the super pacs and small dollar direct fundraising have further gutted either party's ability to exert any real control over candidates or potential candidates.

A good demonstration of this occurred in an Illinois election for some minor elected office.  It was in an area where no Republican had won a race in 5 or 6 decades.  A self declared white supremist entered the primary and the State Party realized what was going on too late to enter a candidate.  Because of this the white supremist ran unopposed and became the official Republican candidate. There was nothing the Republican party could do to remove him as the Republican candidate on the election ballot.  It made a brief embarrassing splash in the national press.

+1, exactly

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8 minutes ago, Angrybk said:

Most of them called Trump out on his faults in the 2016 election and after Jan. 6 (there's dozens of examples) but they run up against the fact that Trump is wildly popular with Republicans _because_ he's Trump, and every scandal basically makes him more popular with R voters or at least doesn't really hurt him. Again, I really think you can't blame Trump's popularity on the media or the GOP machine or whatever, R voters genuinely prefer him because of his personality and what he (says he) stands for. 

Which of course ends up with the other R nominees being stuck in this trap where you can't say bad things about Trump because you'll piss off the R constituency, but if you don't say bad things about Trump then what's the point in even running, since R voters will just say "oh, good point, I'm voting for Trump then!" The only logical reasons to run against Trump are if you're going heroic kamikaze like Christie, or angling for a Cabinet position like Ramaswamy. 

 

The alternative option was always to call him out for being an asshole who didn't care about democracy or at the very least a failure that lost the House, the White House, the Senate, and the Senate again. That would have taken a hard look in the mirror and the loss of an election cycle by the GOP leadership, but I'd argue they could at least be in a position to rebuild afterwards. If Trump loses again (which is by no means certain, but it Vegas gives it a 2/3 which feels about right) the GOP is going to lose up and down the ballot and have nothing to rebuild with except voters who have basically been convinced their vote "doesn't count" because "fraud"*. If Trump doesn't win, the Republican party is probably going to fall off a cliff.

*EDIT: also there was the natural option of explicitly stating that Trump lost 2020. That probably would have forced some self reflection in and of itself, had that position been full throatily articulated by the Republican leadership.

Edited by Josh
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The Gay Old Pedos made their own bed, being the Washington General party that openly and deliberately fails.  They don't deliver for their actual voters, so their actual voters are purging them, and all the filthy lucre of the donor class can't stop it forever.  It's just a political purge now, but soon it will be a real purge, as the naive and innocent voters realize they've been sold the fuck out for generations.  S/F....Ken M 

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On 9/5/2023 at 10:35 AM, Josh said:

The alternative option was always to call him out for being an asshole who didn't care about democracy or at the very least a failure that lost the House, the White House, the Senate, and the Senate again. That would have taken a hard look in the mirror and the loss of an election cycle by the GOP leadership, but I'd argue they could at least be in a position to rebuild afterwards. If Trump loses again (which is by no means certain, but it Vegas gives it a 2/3 which feels about right) the GOP is going to lose up and down the ballot and have nothing to rebuild with except voters who have basically been convinced their vote "doesn't count" because "fraud"*. If Trump doesn't win, the Republican party is probably going to fall off a cliff.

*EDIT: also there was the natural option of explicitly stating that Trump lost 2020. That probably would have forced some self reflection in and of itself, had that position been full throatily articulated by the Republican leadership.

In Perfect World that would be the correct thing to do, but I don't think that either political party would actually do that in the real world. In an alternate universe where Trump ran as a Democrat (could have happened!) I don't think the Dems would have had the courage to do that. 

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46 minutes ago, Angrybk said:

In Perfect World that would be the correct thing to do, but I don't think that either political party would actually do that in the real world. In an alternate universe where Trump ran as a Democrat (could have happened!) I don't think the Dems would have had the courage to do that. 

That’s probably fair; I doubt things would go much differently had Trump been the democrat du jour. But I disagree with the assertion that the Republican Party didn’t have a choice or was completely powerless to stop his nomination. It had at the minimum, a choice between two hard to swallow options, one of which would at least be on the right side of history.

Edited by Josh
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Some notes from watching all the pundits over the last weekend.

- Ds are starting to really notice the poor poll numbers for Biden and some are starting to worry.  More polls came out showing a majority of Americans are not happy with him as the D candidate, and a majority of Ds agree.  His age is the big reason being mentioned.  Some pollsters took the next logical step and asked if he didn't run what D candidate would voters want?  No name given was able to break single digits.  In short - Ds would likely still struggle even if Biden did step aside..

- Some polls are showing R efforts for impeachment are increasing Biden support amongst his base similar to how Trump's base has rallied around him due to the indictments.  We've had back-to-back elections with higher than normal turnout.  I wonder if '24 will have relatively low turnout and it just boils down to whose base shows up more as independents are just tired of Trump v Biden?

- The addendum to the above is will the two things that propelled Ds in '22 still hold.  One was this notion they pushed that voting for Ds was voting to protect democracy.  I blew that off during the run-up but exit polls showed it had an impact on voters.  Will that work again in '24?

The other issue is how many ballot measures will their be regarding abortion.  So far we've seen if anything on the ballot relates to abortion the Rs will lose and lose badly, even if in a solidly red state.  If Rs have a brain they'll make sure to not have any of those measures on ballots... but I have no idea how much control Ds will have of getting said measures on local ballots.

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Trump is avoiding the abortion issue like the plague, and I have to say I’m impressed by that level of political savy. He’s basically silently told Susan B Anthony to go fuck itself, which is a hell of a conservative feat.

I don’t think that changes anything in a general election, because the Dems are going to make sure everyone remembers how we got to this court, but Trump’s attitude towards both abortion and Iowa points to the fact he knows he’s already won and the GOP doesn’t get a vote unless it’s for him.

Edited by Josh
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A third major issue was COVID.

The Democrats spun it that Trump was doing a horrible job with the COVID and they would do better.

Of course if President Hillary Clinton was a thing 2017 - 2021 the Republicans would say she had done a terrible job with COVID and that they would do much better.

Edited by 17thfabn
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Trump has really thrown evangelicals under a bus with his attack on Desantis’ six week abortion law. It’s a little surprising (EDIT: to me) for him to mess with the base this far out. It’s like he just doesn’t care about winning Iowa or else has decided he’s already won.

Edited by Josh
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On 9/19/2023 at 5:48 AM, Josh said:

Trump has really thrown evangelicals under a bus with his attack on Desantis’ six week abortion law. It’s a little surprising (EDIT: to me) for him to mess with the base this far out. It’s like he just doesn’t care about winning Iowa or else has decided he’s already won.

Looking at the polls he's lost some ground (because of this?) but when your lead goes from 40 to 35... it doesn't matter.  Such a small shift seems to match with how many of Trump's crowd are actually diehard pro-life.  The only hallmark of his supporters at this point seems to be... they support him.  Real principled stance to hold on to...

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Bobby goes indy.

Quote

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will run for president as an independent and drop his Democratic primary bid

BY ALI SWENSON

Updated 6:57 PM MESZ, October 9, 2023

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday he will run for president as an independent and drop his Democratic primary bid, adding a wrinkle to a 2024 race heading toward a likely rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Kennedy, a member of one of the most famous Democratic families in politics, was running a long-shot primary bid and has better favorability ratings among Republicans than Democrats. It’s unclear whether GOP support would translate to a general election when Kennedy would also be running against Trump. Allies of both Biden and Trump have at times questioned whether Kennedy would be a spoiler against their candidate.

Biden’s allies so far have dismissed Kennedy’s primary campaign as unserious. Asked for comment on his potential independent run, a Democratic National Committee spokesman responded with an eye roll emoji.

[...]

Monday’s announcement comes less than a week after the progressive activist Cornel West abandoned his Green Party bid in favor of an independent White House run. Meanwhile, the centrist group No Labels is actively securing ballot access for a yet-to-be-named candidate.

Kennedy has spent weeks accusing the DNC of “rigging” the party’s primary against him and threatening that he might need to consider alternatives.

[...]

Far-right and anti-vaccine influencers close to Kennedy also have sent strong signals on social media suggesting he should or will leave the Democratic Party. Last month, Joseph Mercola, an influential anti-vaccine doctor who is allied with Kennedy, ran a poll on X, formerly known as Twitter, asking if Kennedy should quit the party.

While Kennedy has long identified as a Democrat and frequently invokes his late father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle President John F. Kennedy on the campaign trail, he has built close relationships with far-right figures in recent years. He appeared on a channel run by the Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and headlined a stop on the ReAwaken America Tour, the Christian nationalist road show put together by Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Polls show far more Republicans than Democrats have a favorable opinion of Kennedy. He also has gained support from some far-right conservatives for his fringe views, including his vocal distrust of COVID-19 vaccines, which studies have shown are safe and effective against severe disease and death.

[...]

https://apnews.com/article/rfk-jr-presidential-campaign-independent-2024-30d940109c4956de9c81f332ec418463

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I think everyone expected this. I don't think he matters much; he probably appeals to Republican voters at least as much as democrats. No Labels is the much bigger third party spoiler threat for Biden.

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The Republican voters Kennedy appeals to most are already Trump supporters and they won't change unless Trump isn't running.  Moderate Republicans and independents likely won't vote for him.  Some Democrats will.

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Mot importantly, IMHO, he may provoke some widespread conversations on a variety of topics. Now I am not saying his opinion on topics are mostly worthwhile. I figure maybe a third of his positions are rational, one third not rational but understandable, and one third completely cuckoo. 

Simply because of who he is, he'll get press coverage, which means some voters may be provoked into thinking rather than just pulling the lever they always pull.

 

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7 hours ago, R011 said:

The Republican voters Kennedy appeals to most are already Trump supporters and they won't change unless Trump isn't running.  Moderate Republicans and independents likely won't vote for him.  Some Democrats will.

I haven't done a poll personally, but I doubt he gets more Dems than Republicans, and more over I doubt he gets much of either one. Both sides are so polarized that a loser like JFK doesn't move the needle unless you are super anti vax. In which case, Trump isn't exactly the non vax candidate.

Edited by Josh
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