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2024 Presidential Election thread


pfife

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2 hours ago, mtutiger said:

In terms of Trump's capacity, the thing that has always been striking to me isn't his intelligence, it's his complete and total lack of empathy. 

He's clearly older and more forgetful now (and, who knows, may have some issues that we don't know about), but even when he was younger, the guy has always just come across like a deeply sociopathic and broken individual.

He has creepd me out for over 40 years.  Sadly, I knew his lack of empathy and shallowness represented a large proportion of Americans.  Even more than I realized it turns out.  

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2 hours ago, oblong said:

I bet the RNC will operate as well as the MIGOP did under Karamo. 

this is clearly going to make the GOP a mirror of his will and there is nobody with the power to stop him.  Hurray for single party rule by a strongman if he wins. 

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Listening to the Bulwark podcast today was interesting.   A lot of positive feeling since the SOTU but some discordant notes from the left-wing and weird focus group responses from minority voters who appear bamboozled by sneakers and mug shots.   All-in-all, I would say Biden is in a much stronger position today than he was this time last week.  

If Trump continues to secure funding from foreign actors to pay his legal bills in exchange for some sort of policy shift (e.g., Tik Tok), then that will give Biden another 20 things to run against.  Screw the Jason Castros of the world upset at him for saying "illegal" in the SOTU, when they can sit things out and elect an actual napoleon who will plunge the country into two decades of chaos and war. 

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12 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

He has creepd me out for over 40 years.  Sadly, I knew his lack of empathy and shallowness represented a large proportion of Americans.  Even more than I realized it turns out.  

I think his framing as a candidate in 2016, and the fact that the relationship that he had between many of his voters was purely transactional at that point (particularily with evangelicals), as much as I didn't like the guy, it made it understandable. 

Eight years later, that purely transactional relationship is gone for the most part... whether it was deep inside and just waiting to be tapped, or whether Trump himself changed the nature of his voters, a great deal of his support now will defend just about anything he does or his nature. The ultimate irony is that I grew up hearing many people complain about moral relativism (in the era of Bill Clinton in The White House), yet many choose to practice the same moral relativism as it pertains to Donald Trump.

I just started Tim Alberta's book on the subject with respect to Evangelicals, which has been really insightful so far.

Edited by mtutiger
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20 minutes ago, romad1 said:

 

NYT is screwed up editorial wise, but it's more than that I think. Part of it is the way the economics works. Putting stories about Trump on page one doesn't really help them sell more copies of the NYT because there are few NYT readers you can tell anything about Trump worse than they already know. 'We' (in the general society sense) may want the NYT  - being the closest thing in the US to a 'Newspaper of Record' to be leading the charge, but the economic model for newspapers today is that they get diddly squat economically for being quoted in secondary and esp internet sources. If they were getting paid better for being the voice we'd like them to be, that might give them some concrete motivation to get past some of the stupidity they apply to their political coverage. The wider left may want the NYT to carry the water as the standard bearer, but how many are actually paying for a subscription? In the end those are the only people that can matter to the Times - or any any other commercial media outlet. Another symptom of Americans wanting things for free that are not free.

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2 minutes ago, 1776 said:

The line about the media burying the story is unfounded. It’s pretty much the first thing I saw this morning. 

I'll take you at face value that it's the first thing you saw, but it's nowhere to be found at the top of the NYT or WaPo webpages as far as I can tell. 

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3 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

I'll take you at face value that it's the first thing you saw, but it's nowhere to be found at the top of the NYT or WaPo webpages as far as I can tell. 

Note that Greg Sargent just left WaPo. Maybe dissatisfaction with their stance or their dissatisfaction with his views being part of the reason?

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I'm a paid subscriber to WP and get push news alerts.  I got 2 regarding Biden's budget, both of which indicated it was Dead on Arrival.   I got no alerts about Trump pardoning J6 hostage errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr convicted criminals.   

That said I did see via media somewhere that he had said that.   He's said it before so maybe that's part of the coverage.

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Posted (edited)

I feel like there's some hay to be made by Biden's team about Trump promising to pardon people who were found guilty of seditious conspiracy.   That conviction really is a conviction for traitorous behavior.

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4 minutes ago, pfife said:

I feel like there's some hay to be made by Biden's team about Trump promising to pardon people who were found guilty of seditious conspiracy.   That conviction really is a conviction for traitorous behavior.

Out of curiosity, have you read through the Barry Loudermilk report released yesterday?

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5 minutes ago, pfife said:

I'm a paid subscriber to WP and get push news alerts.  I got 2 regarding Biden's budget, both of which indicated it was Dead on Arrival.   I got no alerts about Trump pardoning J6 hostage errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr convicted criminals.   

That said I did see via media somewhere that he had said that.   He's said it before so maybe that's part of the coverage.

The recent layout design for the Web version if WaPo seems to be set up to force you to scroll by blocking a lot of primary coverages well down the page. I'm guessing these layouts are more marketing dept driven than editorial choices. The concept of 'front page' may be getting somewhat obsolete for a web publication 

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7 minutes ago, pfife said:

I feel like there's some hay to be made by Biden's team about Trump promising to pardon people who were found guilty of seditious conspiracy.   That conviction really is a conviction for traitorous behavior.

Tweets (or "Truths" in this case) are probably harder to turn into an ad.... but he'll likely uncork this line at one of his rallies and create a spot for the Biden people at some point.

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4 minutes ago, 1776 said:

Out of curiosity, have you read through the Barry Loudermilk report released yesterday?

I watched the first few episodes on Netflix and did think it was pretty good but at this point I can't remember why we stopped watching it.

In all seriousness, no I haven't read that, I'd be happy to hear quick summary

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Posted (edited)

I just read a quick summary from Axios.

My initial feeling is if the GOP really thought this was something they wouldn't do a report.   Everyone knows no one reads reports.  

In the summary I read, the thing that got me most interested was the direct testimony contradicting Hutchinson.   They said it was specifically about the physical altercation between trump and Secret service, which while lurid isn't critical path of what happened that day.    Other stuff just seemed like stuff I've already heard from GOP for months, like "J6 committee destroyed evidence"

https://www.axios.com/2024/03/11/house-republican-report-jan-6-committee

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5 minutes ago, pfife said:

I watched the first few episodes on Netflix and did think it was pretty good but at this point I can't remember why we stopped watching it.

In all seriousness, no I haven't read that, I'd be happy to hear quick summary

Loudermilk was an interesting show.  I like Ron Livingston in general.  I think the lame performances by the supporting characters was actually a feature not a bug for me.  After a while, transgressive addictive personalities are as draining in fiction as they are in real life.  

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I do recall when Hutchinson testified publicly there were news stories about several secret service agents that wanted to testify contradicting her, I think Ornato was one of them.   My recollection from that time was that we never saw it reported that they went in and testified under oath, I remember thinking at the time that they were blowing smoke.

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2 minutes ago, pfife said:

I just read a quick summary from Axios.

My initial feeling is if the GOP really thought this was something they wouldn't do a report.   Everyone knows no one reads reports.  

In the summary I read, the thing that got me most interested was the direct testimony contradicting Hutchinson.   They said it was specifically about the physical altercation between trump and Secret service, which while lurid isn't critical path of what happened that day.    Other stuff just seemed like stuff I've already heard from GOP for months, like "J6 committee destroyed evidence"

https://www.axios.com/2024/03/11/house-republican-report-jan-6-committee

They think the struggle with the driver anecdote that she relayed as a story she heard in the moment is the critical piece of this?   That shows the depths of their despair. 

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13 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

The recent layout design for the Web version if WaPo seems to be set up to force you to scroll by blocking a lot of primary coverages well down the page. I'm guessing these layouts are more marketing dept driven than editorial choices. The concept of 'front page' may be getting somewhat obsolete for a web publication 

I suspect it's even worse than this.  I wouldn't be surprised if the algorithm feeds different individuals different "front pages".   In this day it seems like it would be business malpractice not to do this if there's no law/regulation prohibiting them.  It's the way it works now.  WaPo needs the clean & clear if everyone else in the league is using it.... 

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