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2024 Presidential Election thread


pfife

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JD Vance yelling at his kid is a weak argument if true. It fits into the category of Trump is an asshole and that's not proven to be a politically successful argument for Democrats. Voters, swing voters in particular, already know Trump is an asshole but don't seem all that bothered by the cursing, name calling, and jerk behavior. Hillary's campaign focused a lot on the Trump is a mean jerk narrative and it didn't seem to work with swing voters nor motivating the base. 

The better arguments against Trump and Vance I believe is that they are phony working class populists who are out of touch and only care about themselves. People who are too radical and too extreme to be in the White House. Agents of chaos and calamity. Those are better arguments to be making than Vance was a jerk to his kid imo.

Edited by Mr.TaterSalad
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6 hours ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

JD Vance yelling at his kid is a weak argument if true. It fits into the category of Trump is an asshole and that's not proven to be a politically successful argument for Democrats. Voters, swing voters in particular, already know Trump is an asshole but don't seem all that bothered by the cursing, name calling, and jerk behavior. Hillary's campaign focused a lot on the Trump is a mean jerk narrative and it didn't seem to work with swing voters nor motivating the base. 

The better arguments against Trump and Vance I believe is that they are phony working class populists who are out of touch and only care about themselves. People who are too radical and too extreme to be in the White House. Agents of chaos and calamity. Those are better arguments to be making than Vance was a jerk to his kid imo.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that any single event (even Trump's NABJ debacle) is the *argument* against either of these guys, for what it's worth.

But in order to make the latter argument, you have to take comments that they make to layer that argument. Some may matter more than others (I doubt JD Vance's story ranks highly as well), but I don't think we should lose sight of that either... 

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13 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

2nd quarter GDP is already in at 2.8% so by the classic two down quarters paradigm you can't call a technical recession before the election, not that will stop the hollering if the 3rd quarter is down.

 

And that’s going to stop who from doing so? They can simply hammer that message on the fear of the coming unknown. I won’t lie, it makes me a bit nervous.

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8 minutes ago, chasfh said:

They can simply hammer that message on the fear of the coming unknown. 

That almost seems like their mission statement, isn't it?

I get that shifts in the economy can happen in ways that aren't ideal, but it's not Fox or the people that watch that network that worry me in terms of how it is perceived; it's everyone else.

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7 hours ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

JD Vance yelling at his kid is a weak argument if true. It fits into the category of Trump is an asshole and that's not proven to be a politically successful argument for Democrats. Voters, swing voters in particular, already know Trump is an asshole but don't seem all that bothered by the cursing, name calling, and jerk behavior. Hillary's campaign focused a lot on the Trump is a mean jerk narrative and it didn't seem to work with swing voters nor motivating the base.

When I see statements like this, I just don’t understand how people can forget that Hillary beat Trump by three million votes. Far more people wanted Hillary to be president than Trump. She won at the polls by 48-46, which is a substantial beating in a country as big as ours. The problem was the ****ing Electoral College, and Hillary committed a strategic error by not giving it the attention that needed. That was a mistake, but that did not make her a horrible candidate, which is the most common adjective I see people apply to her, and which makes me wonder whether not a little sexism is embedded in that criticism.

It’s all water under the bridge because here we all are now, but when can we retire the idea that Trump beat her to a bloody pulp? Because he didn’t. She outdrew him. He won by TKO.

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42 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Yeah, he's scared

I think this is kind of a smart move on Trump’s part, because if Kamala simply refuses, people won’t remember him welshing on the original agreement. They will remember her “chickening out”, or whatever description they apply to it. I think the Democrats need to thread a needle figuring out how to not accept this and for that to also reflect badly on Trump. Since we can’t always predict t the crowd, maybe it is as simple as saying Trump is the chicken, but they do have a point that he agreed to debate Biden under those terms and not Harris, so maybe the crowd will agree with that. We can’t know for sure, but navigating this might be a bit trickier than partisans might give it credit for.

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20 minutes ago, chasfh said:

When I see statements like this, I just don’t understand how people can forget that Hillary beat Trump by three million votes. Far more people wanted Hillary to be president than Trump. She won at the polls by 48-46, which is a substantial beating in a country as big as ours. The problem was the ****ing Electoral College, and Hillary committed a strategic error by not giving it the attention that needed. That was a mistake, but that did not make her a horrible candidate, which is the most common adjective I see people apply to her, and which makes me wonder whether not a little sexism is embedded in that criticism.

It’s all water under the bridge because here we all are now, but when can we retire the idea that Trump beat her to a bloody pulp? Because he didn’t. She outdrew him. He won by TKO.

I agree. Hillary also had a lot of intervening events, such as the Comey Letter being released two weeks in advance of election day and (believe it or not) Wikileaks that helped bring her down as well. Along with poor campaign strategy in terms of where she visited and where she didn't. She was also a Democrat running for a third consecutive D term in a country that generally doesn't reward in-parties like that.

All of which to say is that you can point to many different factors in a race that was decided by about 80,000 votes in three states. It isn't just because labeling him a bully didn't work.

But I do think that looking at everything through the lens of 2016 (as many still do) ignores the ways in which the electorate and the candidate are much different today than they were eight years ago. Donald Trump was much more of an enigma, much less defined, and (believe it or not) was perceived as much more of a moderate on social issues than he is in 2024. His performance in the suburbs in 2016 was likely the high water mark, and it's possible (if not likely) he will do worse there in 2024 than he did in 2020.

Then you get to his personal characteristics... he's 78 years old, much less coherent than he was eight years ago (which is saying something), he's been implicated in legal fights and issues (yes voters are aware of this), isn't focused enough to actually talk policy or carry out a campaign strategy (see: NABJ Conference). 

He's not a Colossus, and talking yourself into learned helplessness, saying things like "can't do that" or "what about 2016?" over every single thing (such as "weird") that comes up to accentuate the personal or character differences between the two candidates seems like a self-defeating strategy in its own right. Yes, they need to focus on policy and highlighting the phony nature of Trump's populism, but you need to layer in supporting data to support the charge of "phony"... and a lot of that is going to be by poking at their weaknesses in character.

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19 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I think this is kind of a smart move on Trump’s part, because if Kamala simply refuses, people won’t remember him welshing on the original agreement. 

I tend to think this overstates Trump's position here, but YMMV

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10 minutes ago, pfife said:

apparently the art of the deal for a debate is to deal with absolutely no one

do you think he ever negotiate a ****ing thing in his life?      He's the ultimate Take Credit For Work You Never Did guy.     He's just a loud mouth.   I've known that since the 80s.  Everyone in New York knows that.    He appeals to the stupid, racists or greedy and there's a lot of stupid, racist and greedy people in our country.   

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1 minute ago, Motor City Sonics said:

do you think he ever negotiate a ****ing thing in his life?      He's the ultimate Take Credit For Work You Never Did guy.     He's just a loud mouth.   I've known that since the 80s.  Everyone in New York knows that.    He appeals to the stupid, racists or greedy and there's a lot of stupid, racist and greedy people in our country.   

totally.  he didn't even write the book he takes credit for writing

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33 minutes ago, pfife said:

apparently the art of the deal for a debate is to deal with absolutely no one

It's amazing how, over and over again in the Trump era, we are told that moves that transparently convey weakness (not strength) end up getting framed as "tactical genius"

This is just another example as I see it... 

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