2024 Presidential Election thread

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, 1776 said:

Johnson and Biden both read the tea leaves and stepped aside. They do have one thing in common.

Here’s another thing they have in common: they both helmed productive legislation and/or enacted presidential orders that did much to help ordinary people.

[chasfh]

11 minutes ago, The Ronz said:

This may sound crazy but I believe it to be true.

Trump has had a database of gun owners since 2016.

He initially used it to target guns owners as they would likely be Republican voters or right leaning.

For him to use it to ban guns isn't far fetched.

Needless to say - all the gun owners I know enthusiastically support Trump.

I think any attempt to ban and confiscate guns would be the most likely trigger for something close to a civil war, because a lot of those gun people trained for that very scenario.

[romad1]

30 minutes ago, The Ronz said:

This may sound crazy but I believe it to be true.

Trump has had a database of gun owners since 2016.

He initially used it to target guns owners as they would likely be Republican voters or right leaning.

For him to use it to ban guns isn't far fetched.

Needless to say - all the gun owners I know enthusiastically support Trump.

Hitler banned guns.  Trump likes Hitler.

[gehringer_2]

As this week runs toward it's close, with Bret Baier admitting that Harris "may have gotten" what *she* wanted from her Fox interview, Trump cancelling half his events and crapping the bed in the ones he did make it to, and Stormy Daniel's name resurfacing to capture a news cycle or two, if the polls don't show some movement, then one of two things must be true: Either it's no longer possible to poll a US election accurately, or political campaigns have become ineffective exercises in futility. 

And of course as always - maybe both.

[gehringer_2]

3 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Hitler banned guns.  Trump likes Hitler.

But did he make it part of his platform in '32?  In the US that's the kind of move one could only make once firmly in power. If Trump proposed any serious kind of gun ban now, Harris would approach a minimum of 350 EVs.

[romad1]

1 minute ago, gehringer_2 said:

But did he make it part of his platform in '32?  In the US that's the kind of move one could only make once firmly in power. If Trump proposed any serious kind of gun ban now, Harris would approach a minimum of 350 EVs.

Not what i meant.  I meant that as a fascist Trump will disarm his opponents. That’s playbook.

[LaceyLou]

55 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Not what i meant.  I meant that as a fascist Trump will disarm his opponents. That’s playbook.

Yes, and he won't warn them in advance-just arrange for them to be taken.

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, romad1 said:

Not what i meant.  I meant that as a fascist Trump will disarm his opponents. That’s playbook.

well of course, after the fact. I guess I'm missing the connection to the "something's wrong" with Trump post in the present tense.

Though just to play devil's advocate, if the guns are mostly in his supporters hands - a la Saddam Hussien's Iraq.....

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

As logical as this sounds, counterpoint is that Jack Smith did release transcript evidence that Trump knew he lost, and acknowledged as much, which suggests he knew the election was fair and square.

Fair point. Though there can be some cognitive dissonance going on as well - say he knows what the numbers really were but never accepts that the 'numbers' are honest ones.

I think it's no doubt is true that Trump is a much more complex character than most of us usually give him credit for simply because he presents to obviously as a caricature,  but that said, that doesn't mean he is any less pathological!

Edited October 17, 2024 by gehringer_2

[mtutiger]

2 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

As this week runs toward it's close, with Bret Baier admitting that Harris "may have gotten" what *she* wanted from her Fox interview, Trump cancelling half his events and crapping the bed in the ones he did make it to, and Stormy Daniel's name resurfacing to capture a news cycle or two, if the polls don't show some movement, then one of two things must be true: Either it's no longer possible to poll a US election accurately, or political campaigns have become ineffective exercises in futility. 

And of course as always - maybe both.

The cadence of campaigning is another factor as well... sure, we had the conversation about Trump's strategy of having a few rallies and hiding in the basement as a means of self-preservation, but she can go out and create offense as well. Three stops in Wisconsin today for instance, at a time when Trump is increasingly receding. Likely will see more of that going forward across the seven states.

One of the few criticisms that I have is that they probably should have picked up the cadence a week or two earlier, but also this is the time to do it insofar that voters (especially less engaged voters) are just now starting to think about voting (whether it be early, by mail or on EDay). 

Edited October 18, 2024 by mtutiger

[chasfh]

59 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Fair point. Though there can be some cognitive dissonance going on as well - say he knows what the numbers really were but never accepts that the 'numbers' are honest ones.

I think it's no doubt is true that Trump is a much more complex character than most of us usually give him credit for simply because he presents to obviously as a caricature,  but that said, that doesn't mean he is any less pathological!

I’m gonna give Trump the benefit of the doubt on that one. 

[mtutiger]

Damage control?

[gehringer_2]

LOL - if it hadn't run the way he intended he would have known and could have called for the right clip at the time. The one saving grace with dishonest people is that they do start believing their own narratives and end up overplaying their hand, which is what I believe happened here. They were hoping to ambush Harris with a clip that showed Trump being reasonable and instead she stood her ground, called them out, and just wasn't having it.  Probably not the response they believed they would get.

[ewsieg]

39 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Damage control?

The only thing I wish Kamala would have done more on with her response to this is call out the right wing media for letting him get away with this ****.  My Trumper friends will tell me he 'says what he means' and tout that as a great trait, but in their media bubble, they don't see that he initially said X until he got called out on it, then said well really I mean Y, but not completely, because X is pretty much the right answer too, but honestly I will just say Y.  He gets called out on that again and just says, I meant Y the whole time and that's all the right wing media covers.  

That said, by avoiding this, it does allow her to say she went into the Lions den, faced tough questions, and answered them without blaming media.  

I have two long time conservative friends, we all listened to Rush Limbaugh as kids, we all read reports from the Heritage Foundation and even if we didn't agree with it all, thought they made good points.  They know Heritage wrote Project 2025, I have played the 'Heritage will play a big part in my administration' quote from Trump, but they still insist that Trump has denounced it and won't follow any of it.  That said, I bet you if they actually read it, they would probably agree with 80% of it, it's only the few things that made it into the media that caused Trump to back.  Scariest thing is, if elected, it's that 20% that he is currently denouncing that he would probably push and would ignore 80% of the fiscal stuff that probably isn't all that bad.

Edited October 18, 2024 by ewsieg

[gehringer_2]

8 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

The only thing I wish Kamala would have done more on with her response to this is call out the right wing media for letting him get away with this ****.  My Trumper friends will tell me he 'says what he means' and tout that as a great trait, but in their media bubble, they don't see that he initially said X until he got called out on it, then said well really I mean Y, but not completely, because X is pretty much the right answer too, but honestly I will just say Y.  He gets called out on that again and just says, I meant Y the whole time and that's all the right wing media covers.  

I think ironically, if they had intended to play both clips, and Harris had gone the path going after the way he shades and trims and double backs on what he says, it may all have worked and been true, but I think in the end less effective than leaving the field open for Harris to able run with putting the worst spin on the enemies comment (since everyone know he had said something like that) and have it look like Fox was just being dishonest in their clip selection.

[mtutiger]

Not always the biggest Maggie Haberman fan, but this was an interesting reveal; on one hand, it matches the attention that Harris is giving to MI/WI this week, on the other hand, it seems sort of damning that for all the time and money that the Trump Campaign has invested in PA (prioritizing it, and it's 19 EC votes, over all other states) apparently feels less confident in PA than MI/WI.

I know that anything can happen and theoretically PA can be won by the loser of the EC, but it's really hard to imagine a candidate winning PA and losing in reality. Particularly given how close the Blue Wall states  tend to shake out.

Edited October 18, 2024 by mtutiger

[gehringer_2]

23 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Not always the biggest Maggie Haberman fan, but this was an interesting reveal; on one hand, it matches the attention that Harris is giving to MI/WI this week, on the other hand, it seems sort of damning that for all the time and money that the Trump Campaign has invested in PA (prioritizing it, and it's 19 EC votes, over all other states) apparently feels less confident in PA than MI/WI.

I know that anything can happen and theoretically PA can be won by the loser of the EC, but it's really hard to imagine a candidate winning PA and losing in reality. Particularly given how close the Blue Wall states  tend to shake out.

Detroit vote is going to sink Trump in MI. He's committed political malpractice here. This isn't 1980, there is energy in the city today and a reflection of that is that they are going to vote.

[mtutiger]

46 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Detroit vote is going to sink Trump in MI. He's committed political malpractice here. This isn't 1980, there is energy in the city today and a reflection of that is that they are going to vote.

I've mostly been ignoring the early vote stuff from most of the states, but the Detroit numbers (and the fact that they are leading the entire state in returns for absentees at the moment) might be the exception given it's history of awful turnout.

It remains to be seen if these are just votes that are just cannibalized from what would normally be EDay voting, but any increase in turnout percentage in Detroit would stand to have a pretty significant impact on the math in Michigan given how powerfully Democratic it is.

[romad1]

welp...

 

[mtutiger]

Quote

NO SHADE — Recently, it’s become something of a pattern: Trump is scheduled for an interview with a neutral media outlet, the date nears and then … things fall apart.

It happened just this week to planned Trump sit-downs with NBC in Philadelphia and CNBC’s “Squawk Box” — and that’s on the heels of him backing out of a “60 Minutes” episode earlier this month.

Why does this keep happening? Playbook has learned that yet another outlet was given an explanation by Trump’s team for why their own interview wasn’t coming to fruition: exhaustion.

The Trump campaign had been in conversations for weeks with The Shade Room about a sit-down interview. The site, which draws an audience that is largely young and Black, hosted an interview with Harris just last week.

But as no interview materialized, Shade Room staff began feeling that feet were being dragged inside Trump’s campaign. No date was ever set, we’re told, but the intention was to try and work toward a sit-down.

In a conversation earlier this week, when describing why an interview hadn’t come together just yet, a Trump adviser told The Shade Room producers that Trump was “exhausted and refusing [some] interviews but that could change” at any time, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

 

[pfife]

LOW ENERGY

[Mr.TaterSalad]

1 hour ago, romad1 said:

welp...

He's pro life right?

[pfife]

SLEEPY DON

[Motor City Sonics]

12 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

He's pro life right?

Mark Robinson's campaign manager? 

[Motor City Sonics]

34 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

 

Hate takes a lot of energy, acceptance of others takes none.