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

imagine if he got to the convention speech and starts talking about Housing Secretary Carville and UN Ambassador Bill Haley... at that point you can't walk it back

he had one job (the debate)

all he had to say was "it's been four years and you still won't shut up"

Foreign policy experts who have publicly supported President Joe Biden are circulating a petition among former national security officials who have worked under him, saying he should step down as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate for the good of the country.
“With the deepest appreciation for your many decades of inspired leadership, we strongly believe that ongoing concerns surrounding your continued candidacy and the growing likelihood of an electoral college victory for Donald Trump put your national security accomplishments ― and our country and your legacy ― at an unacceptable level of risk,” reads the letter they intend to send, which HuffPost viewed a copy of on Thursday evening.

Better to pull the bandaid off before this gets (even more publicly) embarrassing

Basically Pelosi figured out Donilon was the one feeding Biden hopium-spiked poll results, and leaked it out.

Once it was proven that there really was bad info in the inner circle, that gave everyone else confidence in their own eyes. The emperor really was naked. https://t.co/cznv2gvfOH

— Michael Lin, MD PhD 🧬 (@michaelzlin) July 18, 2024

What if it turns out that Joe and Jill stay up every night digging for the treasure buried under the White House, and they need at least another 10 months to reach it?

Starring Nicolas Cage

#Still RidingWithBiden2024 l pic.twitter.com/dpbjpXEkLA

— Dolly Madison ✌🏻🌻 🟦 (@dollymad1812) July 19, 2024

xp Ulysses Grant's Confederate Gold.. saw a History Channel show about this

kid rock is bringing the house down.

I just don't think Democrats are the issue. People who identify as Democrats are going to vote for the Democratic nominee whether it's Biden, Harris, Gavin Newsom, or Claire McCaskill riding a little donkey. The question is what are independents and possible non-voters going to do.

jared and ivanka totally look like the undead.

Well there goes the zombie vote, great.

hulk hogan, dana white, kid rock, eric trump, and tucker carlson. man, that is some brain trust of a speaker lineup.

Tucker to help with the critical undecided Deadhead vote

https://imgb.ifunny.co/images/6a6061b82598e63f53fc64326606fd9d48aea568920835b76f3c5a528d6d4005_1.webp

XP Guest Stars From The Worst Love Boat

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:otjqtwtgkoijkucppmxiq5fy/bafkreidtb44zuyxcnmoz4wwgy5n2sqq7cinzyyztj3fpd5f34vbudx2r4y@jpeg

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:otjqtwtgkoijkucppmxiq5fy/bafkreiawgdpsh6vx4v4mw4fvrewqntysq6lyaw6z46q66zt2nhnpuj5zji@jpeg

New Drake meme

trump just kissed a dead man's fire helmet.

Someone will absolutely go through this speech tomorrow and post a poll on here. Early favourites: "Bullets flying over us, yet I felt serene," "And there was great, great sorrow," "Once my clenched fist went up..."

Any of you who watched that shit should spend a week in the woods doing some serious reflection on what you're doing with your life.

Oh, please.

Jfc It’s not that serious xp

One thing people love is when you brag about how brave you were

He began by somberly saying that this would be the only time he'd ever talk about the shooting--going to take a wild guess he doesn't hold to that.

I personally like guys who didn't get shot by an ostensible supporter...

I'm not watching but I got a CNN news alert saying "Trump Takes the Throne" and that sounds about right.

It's just weird and meandering. He really is terrible at speech-making. Also seems to be given from a place of complacency, like the election's won, which could be a good starting point for Harris.

glad he managed to get hannibal lecter in there...

11:01 PM EDT
Steve Contorno
Trump hints at the future he has put before JD Vance as his hand-picked heir to the MAGA movement. "He's going to be with us for a long time," he says.

11:03 PM EDT
Jeff Zeleny
As Trump introduces Vance to the crowd, Vance can be seen saying: "Thank you sir," putting his hand over his heart.

Trump has been talking for an hour and just hit the second of "two things" he's going to do as President...

— Sam Seder (@SamSeder) July 19, 2024

xp
"Senator, I scorned Donald Trump, I reviled Donald Trump, Donald Trump was an enemy of mine. Senator, you are no Donald Trump."

hulk hogan, dana white, kid rock, eric trump, and tucker carlson. man, that is some brain trust of a speaker lineup.

― scott seward, Friday, 19 July 2024 02:24 (one hour ago) link

imagine that's the best "celebrity" lineup you can rollout and somehow you're still leading the polls.

All the Silicon Valley crypto creeps are in on Trump. This is probably how the country actually falls apart lol. Just straight-up rug-pulled.

https://www.investors.com/news/bitcoin-trump-vance-cryptocurrencies/

Agree with David Axelrod: that was the first good news that the Democrats have had in weeks. It was really bad--and the longest acceptance speech ever at 1:32.

imagine that's the best "celebrity" lineup you can rollout and somehow you're still leading the polls.

― Western® with Bacon Flavor

i uh. don't actually know folks who put a lot of weight on what celebrities spoke at the convention when polled. like i don't think trump is leading in polls because of his decisive majority among the hulkamaniac demo.

Daniel Dale re the difficulty or not of fact-checking Trump

Appreciate it but honestly not - because he’s told almost all of those lies before.

Trump is hardest to fact check because of the extreme volume of false claims but easiest to fact check because he does the same false claims dozens of times over years. https://t.co/H78VglxUEY

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) July 19, 2024

The speech was terrible, I just hope it doesn't gum up Biden leaving. A friend who monitors Twitter says there's lots of pro-Biden "told you so" going on (as in, Joe can beat this guy easily).

Why isn't he then?

An interesting Bluesky thread:

Marshall has way better sources than I do so this may be happening. I remain concerned that changing nominees does far more damage than good. Also, would take extraordinary coordination by Dems, donors, and media operations. I don’t think the thumb sucking babies behind this push are capable of it.
I mean, you can’t credibly poll on this. Word would leak and now you have Harris polling on a coup to unseat Biden or like he has lost his own campaign’s confidence and then he can make no other decision than to step aside, but can’t do it in a dignified way that preserves the campaign’s strength.

So you go in blind. And even if you *had* polling, it means very little. This has never happened before, so who knows how anyone reacts really. What people *say* they’d do in polls is often not what really happens. Not that people lie, they just really don’t know!

For all that this is a large donor revolt, those asses leak to the press so much that you cannot even subtly pull those folks aside and ask what they might do if maybe somehow some day this and that might possibly transpire. It’d be all over every paper in 3 seconds. See above re: undignified.

And the there’s no guarantee that the media attacks stop. If you concede weakness and take him off the ticket, how can you still assert that Biden is fit to remain as President? (I think he can do both, btw). The same stories will hit. But because of Our Dumb Constitution he can’t resign!

He could maybe take the out of writing a 25A letter so Harris serves as Acting President until his COVID clears up or something else, and she can still preside over the Senate (and EC count), but now this news cycle never really dies down.

But maybe it just never dies down! What I wish is that people settled down after the debate, decided Trump was a fascist and Project 2025 a perfect way for Dems to campaign without leaning on the White House nominee if they don’t want to, and just pack the story away. But that isn’t happening.

As Marshall says, whatever happens next will require immense coordination and have to be handled with exquisite delicacy to keep the campaign on track. Nothing about this last month makes me think the folks at the center of it can handle that. So I really wish we wouldn’t go down that road.

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Thursday, July 18, 2024 12:11 PM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

literally burst out laughing reading this

Why isn't he then?

otm.

The question is not whether Trump is a bad or beatable candidate, he is definitely one and should be the other. But you have to actually beat him.

I’m trying to imagine being a denizen of some bizarro dimension where josh marshall is a sort of sage figure whose delayed reckoning with reality causes a wide crisis of confidence

Why isn't he then?

Agree totally, it's just getting Biden to realize that--and noise like that could interfere with him getting there.

a perfect way for Dems to campaign without leaning on the White House nominee if they don’t want to

How does not leaning on the White House nominee help that nominee beat Trump? Isn’t that supposed to be the goal?

Bluesky appears to give people some serious brain worms.

I'd vote for this lady.

Too many planets have aligned by now. I feel like the decision must have already been taken and the rest is just facade and letting the media have its fun and they are now working on doing it in a way that amplifies the chances of Harris.

Highly lol Bluesky thread there.

“Crazy Nancy.” “Invasion.” China virus.” “Hannibal Lecter.” “They cheated with Covid.”

How did that new “tone” work out for you, media? Or did you get played by Trump again? 🤦🏽‍♂️

Watch our short Zeteo supercut of the Trump speech and subscribe: https://t.co/20UUcW0EJi pic.twitter.com/UAxZ1yd3OE

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 19, 2024

Thank you @chrislhayes --- "This is not a colossus, this is not the big bad wolf, this is not a vigorous and incredibly deft political communicator. This is an old man in decline who's been doing the same schtick for a very long time and it's really wearing thin."

— digby (@digby56) July 19, 2024