2024 Presidential Election Shittastic Shittacular

[Sock Puppet]

Circumstances are entirely different this time around, but look at the last election debates. There were 3, and while Trump was an idiot in all of them, he was at his worst in the first. Granted he apparently had Covid at the time, but still, the news media made a big deal about how much better (lol) he did at the other two. If Trump doesn't refuse to debate again, hopefully Biden can pull it together enough to do better.

I think it's worth doubling down and giving it a shot. If Joe's mind is truly gone, then Harris can still step in, and hopefully drive home the message that this enfeebled geezer still made a better President than Orange Julius Caesar.

ETA: Fuck, 2 of those 5 sentences ended with rhymes. I'd turn this into a rap but I'm really lazy.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

The guy whose last time around half off the crooks are in jail, or the guy with a decent team of actual professionals around him.

[Ari]

It would certainly be great if we had a younger and more aggressive candidate and assuming there are election in 2028 the dems might consider working to bring one to the foreground because I have doubts that our current population will support voting directly for a brown woman as president.

A lot of this may be moot, Trump may take the electoral college and/or be given it by the supreme court despite Biden winning the popular vote. There might not be anyone that we can run against him that will win it because this all might end up with the supreme court deciding to toss a bunch of votes and declare him the winner against the cries of the people, as our new king's court.

[viscousmemories]

To be clear, the only thing I'm 100% certain of is that I have no fucking idea how this all plays out. I've just seen old Biden glitching more and more often, and I'm not sure people will vote for a taxidermic octogenarian. Biden and many Dems seem to believe that he is the only one who could possibly beat Trump, but I don't get that. He was wildly unpopular before the election, and he still is. It seems more likely that people came out to vote for the Democrats than for him. I don't see why they wouldn't do the same if he was swapped out.

[LarsMac]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

To be clear, the only thing I'm 100% certain of is that I have no fucking idea how this all plays out. I've just seen old Biden glitching more and more often, and I'm not sure people will vote for a taxidermic octogenarian. Biden and many Dems seem to believe that he is the only one who could possibly beat Trump, but I don't get that. He was wildly unpopular before the election, and he still is. It seems more likely that people came out to vote for the Democrats than for him. I don't see why they wouldn't do the same if he was swapped out.

Well, the only thing that is clear to me is, as it stands now, I have a choice to pick Trump, and all he stands for - Which can best be described as the 2025 version of the "Sacking of Rome",...
or I can pick whoever the Dems put up.

It does not seem to be a difficult decision.

[Ari]

It would appear that Biden has today and today only to shore things up as the rich media is really pushing Harris as a replacement. I expect we will eventually get what the rich people want, so I'm hoping I'm 8 years out of date and that I'm wrong that there are many that would rather strap on the blinders and ship their children off to Trumpstein island before voting for a brown woman as president.

I personally would be happy with a Harris presidency, any sort of Kamala is a Kop and liberal in name only argument feels long outdated.

Powerful Democratic backers to pause donations until Joe Biden steps aside | Joe Biden | The Guardian | Jul 2024

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Ari

I personally would be happy with a Harris presidency, any sort of Kamala is a Kop and liberal in name only argument feels long outdated.

We have Kamala Kamilah at home.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by Ari

Powerful Democratic backers to pause donations until Joe Biden steps aside | Joe Biden | The Guardian | Jul 2024

I like how that link makes it look like Joe Biden wrote that article.

[erimir]

Personally, I don't really care about Biden vs. Harris. Against Trump, I would vote for Joe Biden, I would vote for Kamala Harris, I would vote for Hillary Clinton, I would vote for Bernie Sanders, Jimmy Carter, Mark Cuban, Michelle Obama, Oprah, Michael Bloomberg, Joe Manchin, I will even vote for Eric Adams.

I think it's possible Harris won't be as effective at wrangling Congressional Democrats as Biden was. But it's very much possible that 2nd term Biden won't be either, given what we've seen.

I've seen some speculation (from neurologists) that perhaps his issue is that he has Parkinson's or one of the similar conditions. (Symptoms such as slowness of movement, rigidity, difficulty with balance and reduced facial expressions could be caused by that... and doesn't seem incongruous with what we've seen.)

I don't know that trying to deny or act like there's no real problem is going to work - especially not with the way the media is out for blood. Biden should probably have a neurological evaluation. This isn't all to say he's losing his marbles - those conditions primarily affect movement, not cognition. So I don't think Biden has dementia and I think a lot of the talk was overblown last year. But it seems very possible that things have changed just in the past few months. Once you get up to that age, sometimes things can progress rapidly - especially if conditions are going untreated. The possibility of him being able to campaign and serve as president would certainly be greater if he were under treatment - but it seems like maybe that won't happen because their fear is that the politics of him doing so would be bad. But the politics of degenerating further would perhaps be worse!

Clearly Democrats need to change the trajectory of the race, and it's not really clear whether Biden can do that, given that he just blew one of his big chances to do so (it has harmed him instead of Trump!).

All that said, I don't have ALL of the relevant information. But from what I can see, it doesn't seem like Harris is obviously less popular... and certainly she will have an easier time with the demands of a campaign and I don't see how she could possibly do a worse job debating Trump.

It's possible some other candidate would do better than Harris, but the problem with any other candidate is that picking them would lead other candidates to say "Why not me?" Harris is the only one who Democrats would have a clear answer for - because she is literally next in line, she was elected by the US as a whole, she's been vetted at a presidential level, she is leading by a large plurality in polls of who Democrats would want after Biden. As well as making a transition easier for various campaign legal reasons.

[viscousmemories]

Biden promised to beat Trump again in 2020 during his rehabilitation tour yesterday. It was in the midst of uproarious applause and cheering so the crowd likely missed it, but the cameras didn't. I've been seeing it clipped all over the place.

[Ari]

As someone who previously said we should slow down and have a think, I really hope people are having a good talk and think this weekend, because while I'll vote for the literal bloated corpse of Biden over the two figurative bloated corpses, I was not reassured.

"Did you watch the debate?" "I don't think so, no."
Uugggghhh...

[viscousmemories]

It's weird how often I see arguments of this sort online:

Person 1: "I'm concerned that Biden can't beat Trump in his current condition; maybe he should consider stepping aside."

Person 2: "Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what a second Trump term would mean?"

At least one pundit I saw offered an argument to connect the dots, but their argument was just "LBJ decided not to run for re-election, proving that whenever an incumbent bows out their party loses the race", which seems a little weak.

[LarsMac]

Well, if that rotting corpse can talk, he's getting my vote

[Basset Hound]

A born Terran like Joe Biden or an illegal space alien like Donald Trump? I am a Terran patriot and will take Joe Biden any day.

[erimir]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

It's weird how often I see arguments of this sort online:

Person 1: "I'm concerned that Biden can't beat Trump in his current condition; maybe he should consider stepping aside."

Person 2: "Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what a second Trump term would mean?"

At least one pundit I saw offered an argument to connect the dots, but their argument was just "LBJ decided not to run for re-election, proving that whenever an incumbent bows out their party loses the race", which seems a little weak.

The comparison to LBJ doesn't seem entirely apt.

Notably, the reason he stepped down was unpopularity - especially within the party (TBH I'm not sure LBJ would've done worse in the general, but he may have), and particularly over Vietnam.

Additionally, it's hard to disentangle cause and effect, because it could be that HHH lost due to his association with the same policies that brought down LBJ! So did he step down because Democrats were in a bad situation or did internal party strife cause HHH to lose when LBJ would've won? It's unclear.

But Biden stepping down due to health would be a very different reason, because while Kamala Harris would suffer the same policy associations and there is SOME discontent there, it's not as extreme and her platform would clearly be less extreme than Trump's. But concerns about her age and health would clearly NOT transfer.

There isn't a direct US precedent in the few dozen elections we have to look at, or the even fewer we have with modern campaigns and polling, so unfortunately we can't really say what will happen based in the US context. There are however similar cases in other countries which probably lend support to the notion that replacing Biden could have more upside potential than downside...

The polling for Democrats in other races like the Senate being more positive does suggest that maybe a more generic Democrat would do better. And that's basically my impression of Harris at this point...

[fragment]

Originally Posted by erimir

There are however similar cases in other countries which probably lend support to the notion that replacing Biden could have more upside potential than downside...

Down here Ardern became party leader weeks out from our election, after the previous guy stepped down. There was pretty dramatic polling turnaround, and while her party didn't win a plurality they managed to negotiate a governing coalition. Obviously there are a whole lot of differences between NZ 2017 and USA 2024, but it's one piece of evidence that a leadership change can make a pretty big difference in a modern representative democracy. I actually find that quite depressing, but it's a reality of politics.

[ChuckF]

It seems fairly unlikely to me that Biden will drop out, mainly for structural reasons, such as the disposition of the campaign cash (only Harris could use it) and the inevitable Republican challenges to state ballots. Unless he dies.

Personally, I'm fairly disappointed that he is the candidate, and wish he had chosen not to run again. But he is the candidate, and I will crawl over broken glass to vote for him. You don't let the enemy call the tune, and the answer to every disigenuous concern troll should be some combination of "no you" and "get fucked." Democrats could learn this from Republicans. And don't be afraid to use the gift SCOTUS just handed him.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

[viscousmemories]

I will vote for whomever the Democratic candidate is, but I hope it's not Biden. My wild-ass guess is that no fewer (and maybe more) people will vote for the Democratic candidate if it is Harris, Newsome, Whitmer, or Elmo. I can't imagine anyone but Biden believes that he is uniquely qualified to a) beat Trump, and b) lead the US. God Almighty notwithstanding.

[slimshady2357]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

Democrats could learn this from Republicans. And don't be afraid to use the gift SCOTUS just handed him.

Yes!

Use that new power Joe!

Have some Supreme Court Justices eliminated. Shoot Trump at the next debate. Stab Mitch in the eye with a pencil!

Total-complete-absolute-unquestionable immunity while in office

[Ari]

One thing that surprised me when Roe V Wade fell was the amount of apathy I saw, with so many responding "Fuck it, it doesn't affect me, let's party!" Lots of people are worried about Biden, but that's the thing, lots of people are worried. I've yet to see anyone say that they're switching to Trump or RFK Jr. because of it, but I have seen lots of people becoming more aware of the situation.

[Stephen Maturin]

Saw an interview with Michael Moore in which he claimed to have seen polling suggesting that Biden's support among the Michigan voters of Arab descent (200,000 or so people) is now at 20% - way down from 60% in 2020 - based on Biden's handling of the war in Gaza. Since Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania will decide who gets to be POTUS - fucking AGAIN - that's more than a little disturbing if true.

Then again, Moore also claimed that the people running Biden's campaign are committing "a form of elder abuse," which automatically casts doubt on everything else he says.

[viscousmemories]

That 20% comes from the Arab-American Institute, and I'd be surprised if it's not lower now.

The simple reason why Biden’s numbers and ratings are so low is, in a word, Gaza. When given 10 issues and asked to rate which of the three are most important to them, 60% say it is the war in Gaza. In response to another question, 57% also say that Gaza will be “very important” in determining their vote in November.

On another note, the Republicans have adopted an ostensibly more liberal approach to abortion today, claiming they won't seek a national ban. Probably a lie, but gives cover to those who want to vote for Trump but aren't anti-abortion extremists.

[Ari]

Wow they certainly have an agenda they're pushing making all sorts of presumptions from data that doesn't show us numbers and has no error bars. They claim they interviewed 900 Arab Americans in 4 key states but I couldn't even find out if this means 900 from each state or 900 people total.

"If the election was held today who would you vote for,"
18% Biden
32% Trump
12% RFK JR
25% Undecided.

What, what do they mean that it's Biden's Gaza policy, do they mean that he hasn't nuked it from orbit yet, because I see 44% of those polled supporting hardcore zionistic action against Palestine, but then again, that 44% could actually just be 44 people.