US Politics, July 2024 - "Will you just drop out, man?"

He sounded fine -- he had his B-12 shots. It seemed to have offered more assurance to the Not Very Online locals in a WhatsApp thread I'm on.

I just don't know if his ah moderation is what this world-historic moment demands.

of course they all switch back and forth reading teleprompter screens, that's been standard for a long time

Trump's misreading of the teleprompter has been hilarious/horrifying on many occasions

I don't think there's anything paranoid about thinking that either candidate in a two horse race has a really great chance of winning, especially given the problems of their respective opponents.

What I find more difficult to understand is having a definitive opinion on an outcome that doesn't seem particularly predictable

Well, this moment is a bit different, don’t you think? He urgently needs to dispel the notion that all he can do is read

― calstars, Monday, July 1, 2024

You really want him improvising? After all we've known about him for 40 years?

The only prez I've ever seen able to do it was Bill Clinton. Even Obama was better with prepared texts.

that post is completely incoherent and you guys are sad

real saddos get wrapped up in presidential elections 😎

I simply don't believe that people are going to vote for Donald Trump.

I’m assuming you mean “enough people,” since obviously tens of millions of people are definitely going to. I hope that’s true, but tbh he got way more votes in both 2016 and 2020 than I expected, so I’m not gonna lowball him this time.

I don't think Biden will have to have an upset or a history-defying win

But that’s quite literally what he needs. No incumbent president with his abysmal approval has won reelection in the history of approval ratings. That obviously doesn’t mean it can’t happen, there are a lot of unprecedented things in this election already. But it means that the exactly what it will take: a history-defying and -making victory.

The only prez I've ever seen able to do it was Bill Clinton.

I know we're all generally in agreement that he sucked & I don't dispute it but his ability to adjust on the fly & recalibrate was breathtaking

all of you are sad fwiw. you keep talking about ratings and failing

and xxp calstars no I don't think this moment was different

but I guess for all of you and the hair-on-fire media it just has to be about Biden and any perceived mistakes he might make, regardless of the content of his speech

and those really dismissive questions at the end: "what makes you so confident you should be the president"?

I mean, well, "because I am?" and "because who gives you ridiculously arrogant columnists and your op-eds with no knowledge of politics a say in who should be president?"

dan i'm trying my best not to make fun of you and stuff, but it's the combo of you being a complete dick about the way you're communicating with people + being so wrong that's getting to me, plus to be honest the whole situation with sliding into fascism and stuff. it's just too much, all at once. it's ok if you're a complete dick, but you should be correct more often. if you're wrong as often as you are, you should be a less of a dick. the fascism stuff isn't your fault

If there's anything we all agree on, it's that every NYT columnist except Bouie and maybe Michelle Goldberg should be thrown out of a helicopter.

ztbd otm

lol this is all just such a weird conversation to be having after that debate.

Joe Biden can still win, because the winner will be one of two names on the November ballot and he will most likely be one of them — which gives him a better chance of getting elected president than anyone else except for the other guy on the ballot. It's a weird election, almost nobody likes either of these guys very much, if there were a yes/no vote tomorrow on whether to dump both of them and start over I think it would pass with like 70 percent of the vote. So, it's possible that either of them wins by virtue of people disliking the other guy just a little bit more.

But. Anyone who can't be honest and admit that Biden is a terribly weak and personally unpopular candidate who is by all available evidence at significant risk of losing to a convicted felon and rapist is just not taking any of this at all seriously.

If there's anything we all agree on, it's that every NYT columnist except Bouie and maybe Michelle Goldberg should be thrown out of a helicopter.

Especially if we can try to drop on top of Trump on the golf course.

I’m assuming you mean “enough people,” since obviously tens of millions of people are definitely going to. I hope that’s true, but tbh he got way more votes in both 2016 and 2020 than I expected, so I’m not gonna lowball him this time.

He didn't get enough votes last time. Do you think he's become more popular since leaving office? I know Biden is unpopular. Don't waste my time with that. Do you think Donald Trump has become more popular since leaving office?

sorry z_bd, I'm glad you're not making fun of me. I know I can be a dick, I grew up in the 70s and we all had to loudly voice our opinions to be heard (the "me generation"), and I even could see my fellow students as dicks at the time, and I know that that is abrasive in today's world

but I don't really know what you were offended by, I would genuinely like your opinion

all of you are sad fwiw. you keep talking about ratings and failing

but I guess for all of you

There isn't really an 'all' as far as I can see, or even anything that approaches a consensus, so I don't think this is particularly true

Do you think he's become more popular since leaving office?

I mean, his approval ratings now are higher than when he left office (when they were close to but not quite as low as where Biden's are now), so I don't know. I wouldn't think he would be more popular, for all the obvious reasons. But the only indicators we have suggest he is. Cannot really overemphasize how little attention many people pay to politics, and how easily people are swayed by recency bias. Trump was the president they didn't like then, Biden is the president they don't like now.

It's likely that since people tend to think in political binaries, Trump's apparent (comparative) strength is partly based on Biden's unpopularity and so the opponent benefits by default. Am I agog that it seems very possible that Trump actually gets reelected? Absolutely. But I'm not in denial about the clear and present possibility of it.

And Trump is still very very unpopular! None of this means he isn't. But we have two very very unpopular candidates running, so you can't count on Trump's unpopularity dooming him.

you don't have to be a dick to post here . . .

BUT IT HELPS

<3

at this point i wonder if Harris is being underrated, just because if Biden actually stepped down, the sight of a normal-ish person who isn't decrepit in charge might be a huge relief to 55% of the population after dealing with the last 8 years.

tbh i'm trying not to get too worked up over the election, given that the Democrats with actual influence didn't bother to do so until 3 days ago.

going upthread a bit, unperson you said something about just being unable to believe that americans, after 34 felony counts, jan 6, the constant lying etc would vote for trump.

that resonates with me because it reminds me of how i felt in oct 2016! but...part of the shock, and hopefully learning something during that period, was the realization that yes, this is a very racist and xenophobic country, 45%+ of the people are so ready to cast that vote for a fascist.

so, why is it so hard to believe that the people who did that in 2016, knowing full well who trump was and who he represented, would do it again?

xp i think harris would do better than biden, and wish biden would step down. i'm not a big harris fan. but she would do better than biden.

Trump doesn't need to be more popular now, he just needs Biden to shed a small number of votes in several key states.

Isn’t he more popular now?

Needs a small number of people, in the privacy of the voting booth, to hand the keys to the crazy abusive uncle instead of the doddering one.

He didn't get enough votes last time. Do you think he's become more popular since leaving office? I know Biden is unpopular. Don't waste my time with that. Do you think Donald Trump has become more popular since leaving office?

this isn't directed at me, but...yes? didn't george fucking w bush get more popular after he left office? don't americans, demonstrably and reliably, have amnesia? have we not seen this play out over and over?

things can't be reduced to a single stupid thing like this, but can i argue that the most important swing issue of our times is who is more entertaining as president? old guy joe biden or the fascist?

didn't george fucking w bush get more popular after he left office?

Bush didn't go on a crime spree. He barely even gave speeches. He went back to Texas and became a painter. People didn't like Donald Trump when he left office and Donald Trump has spent virtually every waking moment since reminding people of what they dislike about him.

the number of people who believe in either A) christian rapture/apocalypse in their lifetimes or B) end of the world / human-caused apocalypse is staggering. it's not a marginal number of people. it's like, half of the country! at least! there are like 150 million people who are standing and grabbing their coats while watching the end of the game, or some shit!

People didn't like Donald Trump when he left office and Donald Trump has spent virtually every waking moment since reminding people of what they dislike about him.

ok! but yeah, john kerry obliterated gwb in those debates in 2006, and everyone already knew that he and his administration had lied about wmd's and the entire pretext for a disastrous war. and it didn't fucking matter! because george bush swings a golf club and is painting late in life and we love that! it's dumb as fuck but you know it's true.

Trump is pretty sui generis. I believe the polls and am listening to Sarah Longwell on the Focus Group on what is making "double haters" lean one way or another (or to RFK).

But I personally don't find any of these historical precedents that persuasive. First it's kind of fallacious to believe that because something has never happened before it will not happen. But second because these historical precedents, like even the ghoul Mitch McConnell are from a completely different era of civility. It's just a completely different thing with Trump. So these historical analogies don't resound with me any more than the sports analogies.

it's dumb as fuck but you know it's true.

so many applications for this excellent line. like, just US politics applications.

He didn't get enough votes last time. Do you think he's become more popular since leaving office? I know Biden is unpopular. Don't waste my time with that. Do you think Donald Trump has become more popular since leaving office?

But he did get more votes than every candidate who has ever run besides Joe Biden, including himself in 2016. So he doesn’t really have to get more popular, just hope that Biden gets slightly less popular in a few states.

I wonder if RFK has tried to have any public presence this past week or is just laying low. Seems like his time to shine — an alternative without the necessary party mechanics.

Donald Trump also spent 4 years being a complete wreck of a President and ended up getting more votes than he did in 2016. People are fucking crazy.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/162044/history-usually-kinder-presidents.aspx

https://i.imgur.com/fsNtil3.png

there is also a whole saying about distance making the heart grow fonder. it might seem like trump has been non-stop in our faces since 2020, but that's really only true for some people, not the majority of people. he's been banned from twitter, and news hasn't carried him live in a while. he's always there in the background in a way that other presidents haven't, and i agree that he's sui generis and that no one should be asserting any sort of certainty about what will happen. it's for that reason that i see a historical outlook (analogy?) that people tend to like presidents more after they leave office, even if it doesn't make any fucking sense, combined with vast swaths of the country who are either MAGA, white evangelicals, and/or accelerationist/apocalypse-watchers and are openly seeking chaos. that combo makes things very difficult to predict, which is why i find assertions that trump's 34 felonies are some sort of gamechanger kind of completely naive

Repeating BUT TRUMP DID CRIMES ignores that everyone has known he did crimes for years, 20% of the country thinks it’s cool that he did crimes, 20% doesn’t really care that he did crimes as long as he nominates the right Justices and 2-10% of the country doesn’t like that he did crimes but also thinks Joe Biden is a walking corpse.

otm

OK, I give up. You guys are right — Trump is an invincible sun god, destined to rule over a thousand year reich, and we can either supplicate ourselves before him or crawl into the bathtub, whiskey bottle in one hand, razor in the other. See you in November!

that's not at all what i'm saying. trump fucking blooooooooooooooows and half this country hates him. i think biden is in such bad shape right now that harris would do better, this november. that's how bad it is.

I don't think many people are saying they know what's going to happen. We're saying we don't know, but the signs are not good. We're all just reading runes here. I'd be happy for some good news. The felony conviction, that was good news. Lately not so much.

Hey it’s also true that 20% of the country thinks Joe Biden is a golden god, 20% doesn’t care if he’s sundowning as long as he nominates the right Justices and 2-10% doesn’t like that he’s sundowning but prefers that to fascism.

Pretty sure everyone here think it’s going to be close.

Well, except for the two people who think every poll is a lie and Joe’s actually dominating.

lol

Aw, Hindenburg is too old said some Germans before electing a monster

— Jen "I dissent " Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) July 2, 2024

i'm used to things not going at all how i think they should go. i don't think harris is a good candidate, let alone the best, but it's probably the vice president who is next up, right?

heavily related: if biden suddenly fell ill and died tomorrow, would harris become the democratic nominee? what would the process be?

She'd become president and then would have to nominated and approved at the convention. But definitely they would do that, in that scenario I don't think anyone would contest her claim to the nomination.

to be nominated

didn't george fucking w bush get more popular after he left office?

yeah because he was fucking gone at that point. its not like Trump where he spent his years out of office insisting that he should still be in office and was the very first to announce he was going to run in 2024

I get the logic, I know a president this unpopular usually doesn't get re-elected, but this is such an unusual election, I mean he's running against a literal felon who is running on straight fascism and calls the Democrats "vermin", this ain't exactly Ronald Reagan

at any rate it seems like the window for there being any other nominee is rapidly closing. if they do it in the next couple weeks it will at least be some sort of decision (albeit heavily belated). if they wait until august or september to replace him after another huge embarrassment, it will (rightly) be seen as reactive and panicked

my hunch is with two extremely unpopular candidates who are in some sense both incumbants it's gonna come down to who's NOT on the front page. like was Biden is getting hammered in the news for being old and sundowning on national TV but now it's all about this SC ruling and specifically about how Trump is going to be a king now, which by the way is something that actually does really scare swing voters

anyway, I'm betting Trump is probably gonna be the focus for most of this. and I'm hoping it reminds people of just what a fucking cancer he is.

know a president this unpopular usually doesn't get re-elected, but this is such an unusual election, I mean he's running against a literal felon who is running on straight fascism and calls the Democrats "vermin", this ain't exactly Ronald Reagan

I, too, believe those things to be disqualifying. I report sadly that many of our countrymen don't feel the same. Shit is happening all around us. My own school system, which pretty much blew off the book banners for years, is now having to go ahead and ban books anyway because the Legislature is making them. And they're just gonna go ahead and do it, because hey, what can they do. The University of Tennessee quietly deleted the word "diversity" this year from every office and department and job title that included it, because hey, what can they do.

The bad stuff is happening, and lots of people are not fighting it. Regret to inform. The immediate political landscape that I see around me has shifted much more authoritarian in the past four years than it was when Trump was in office. In a lot of red states, the terrain is even more Trump friendly than it was in 2020. My governor, both my senators, my county mayor are all enthusiastic Trump supporters, not just quiet grudging ones. Yes, things have changed in the past 4 years, and for the worse in a lot of ways politically.