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

Biden crossing that rainbow bridge in a Trans Am.

Biden drops out of race and then shows up the next day forgetting he did it

^that's a great idea. now we just need to tell him that he dropped out yesterday and today is the first day he forgot it

gaslighting is bad, but this is for national security reasons

lol

Elder Abuse or Patriotism? You be the judge.

Starting on Super Tuesday, I tunneled deep inside Trump 2024 to study the people and priorities driving his campaign.

I found an operation that's been optimized to run a very specific race against a very specific opponent.

Now they just hope he stays in.https://t.co/p1Si4Gqbdu

— Tim Alberta (@TimAlberta) July 10, 2024

i dunno i think he's gonna drop out and i think there are going to be a lot more dems calling for it once nato is over

Haha, I called this shit elder abuse as well!

let's wrap this nato shit up team, we got a resignation letter to write

btw trump is meeting with orban later today. they're gonna talk about the meeting orban had with putin last week

what's more likely -- 2scoops goes to prison or sleepy joe drops out?

sleepy joe drops out by about 1 quadrillion to 1

The way Trump talks about Pelosi and Obama on the stump absent-mindedly, you know he'll keep ranting against Sleepy Joe in the present tense even after Biden's out of the race.

The Orban thing is so disconcerting, as was the Trump plane parked next to the Russian gov plane in D.C. for two days straight.

what's more likely -- 2scoops goes to prison or sleepy joe drops out?

whynotboth.gif

^^^

I want to see how the press conference goes tonight before I lay down any money

The press conference is scheduled for 5:30 Eastern today.

Ah geez he’d be loggy from his 4:30 Salisbury steak

Ever since the absolutely abysmal pro-genocide articles that the Atlantic has been running, I can't bring myself to click on anything they publish. Just abysmal stuff.

The author of that one is a NR refugee so I don’t think it’s going to change your mind.

Tim Alberta sucks, but since Justin Amash’s retirement, he is the public voice for the relatively large Trump opposition in the Michigan Republican Party.

when you cannot see a way to win the game you want keep playing the game. i am not surprised by that klein comment about anon biden defectors at all, because that’s been my mental analogy. biden-defectors think democrats can keep playing the game even if trump wins (and also he might not).

do you think dems or any opposition can keep playing if trump wins? i mean rome didn’t fall in a day. nb i never read gibbon.

Trump will never spend a single day in prison

press conference is 6:30 not 5:30 EST

Doesn't he begin sundowning at 6pm?

The Alberta article is actually interesting, just because it tells you something about what the people working behind Trump are thinking and doing. The short version is, they are pretty sure they are going to win, and they think there’s a good chance they get both houses of Congress too. They are excited. But also a few of them evince occasional bits of worry about what they are putting in motion. That never lasts long though.

Anyway, it was mostly reported and written before the debate blowup, but of course it’s updated at the top with all of that stuff. And they seem a little unsettled at the prospect of having to run against someone other than Biden, because that’s what all of their plans are based on. But they still mostly shrug and say they’re going to win anyway.

The most interesting thing from a strategic standpoint is the campaign is devoting a huge amount of resources to stopping “voter fraud“ at polling places, they are going to have people watching everything everywhere, filing challenges, etc. This is entirely at Trump’s direction, because apparently he really believes all the crazy things he says about vote fraud. So they are spending money on that rather than get out the vote efforts. Alberta kind of presses them on this, like is this really a good idea? But it’s what Trump wants.

Voter suppression instead of GOTV makes a lot of sense. With the right kind of cooperation from your flunkies in state legislatures and the judiciary it's MUCH easier to take votes away from your opponent in selectively targeted precincts than it is to find large numbers of voters who wouldn't have voted without your GOTV efforts.

it makes a lot of sense if you want to lose

Jim Crow vote suppression won a hell of a lot of elections in the old Confederacy states. It was sort of their specialty.

if youre famous and the right type, they (by which i can include scotus) will let you do it.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/07/11/voters-feelings-about-the-2024-campaign-and-candidates/

A narrow majority of voters (53%) say they would replace both Biden and Trump with different candidates if they had the ability to decide the major party candidates for the 2024 presidential election. The share saying this is up slightly from the 49% of voters who said this in April.

That shift is largely due to Biden supporters becoming more likely to say both candidates should be replaced:

71% of Biden backers now say they would replace both candidates, up from 62% in April.
The share of Biden supporters who would keep Biden but replace Trump is down to 23%, from 32% in April.

From Politico:

Democratic lawmakers are making contingency plans in case Joe Biden tanks his highly anticipated solo press conference later Thursday, with at least a half-dozen lawmakers preparing to go public against the president, according to six people familiar with discussions.

Three of those lawmakers’ offices have already drafted statements, according to two people who have been briefed on conversations.

yes, let's give him one more high profile chance to screw up before we act

And if he does just ok?

a U.S. official explains why the Biden administration is resuming a shipment of 500 pound bombs to Israel which had been paused since May when the U.S. stated that it had concerns about the killing of civilians in Gaza: pic.twitter.com/KUtFCOyqQx

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) July 10, 2024

Joe’s got to stick it out for his priorities.

Phew so glad we’re only sending the 500lb bombs!

It’s OK, everyone. His god told him it’s ok to commit terrorism when people of colour are killed. That’s why he beefed up police funding immediately after becoming POTUS, too.

Don’t let the door hit your ass too hard on the way out, motherfucker

Look some people want a ceasefire and some people want 2,000-pound bombs, so 500-pound bombs is like a nice compromise. Everybody gets some of what they want.

Thinking about this press conference, I suspect the Biden campaign is after one thing only: that moment when, after being bombarded by questions about the debate and the polls and George Clooney, Biden smiles benignly and asks "Does anybody want to talk about NATO and the fate of the world?" If that's how it does unfold, and he carries it off skillfully enough, I could see how that might work--which is a troubling thought.

Biden's MO is to get angry and yell-y. He's a little more on the ball when he's pissed off.

I.e when Shoneys removed a key item from their salad bar

Biden's MO is to get angry and yell-y. He's a little more on the ball when he's pissed off.

He's known to curse a lot in private meetings. I wish he'd show that side of himself tonight. "I'm the President of the United States! Who the fuck are any of these assholes to question me? Who the fuck does the New York Times think they are, running two hundred fucking articles saying I should drop out? Fuck you, go write crossword puzzle clues."

Based on other recent events my guess is it will be not great/not terrible/close enough to a normal presidential press conference structurally for people who want to be reassured to be reassured but not enough to sell those who have turned the page on him. In other words, more of the same. Then, barring some absolute surge of other Dems calling for a replacement, focus shifts to the GOP convention and Biden catches a little bit of a breather.

But of course, he could also look/sound bad enough that it ramps up those calls immediately.

I wish he'd just say "Fuck you assholes, I quit! Catch me at Rehoboth."

You know what people under 50 like more than old white men? ANGRY old white men cursing at them.

At the moment, I'm clinging to the wait-till-NATO's over theory (and maybe the RNC, although it'd be a great way to knock that out of the headlines), then the damn breaks. It makes perfect sense, the idea of not wanting to embarrass him right now.

Don’t let the door hit your ass too hard on the way out, motherfucker

Beamish, serious civil question: what do you anticipate the Gaza crisis will look like under the new Trump administration?

600 lb bombs

https://t.co/pD7TQilcFa pic.twitter.com/vk6K8W1uxI

— Jason Kirk (buy my novel) (@JasonKirk_fyi) July 11, 2024