Donald Trump

[stevebrooks]

Trump keeps boasting that every time he gets indicted his numbers go up, and that's true, among the Republican Primary voters they are polling, you see the issue here? They aren't even polling the rank and file Republican's, polls of non-republican voters show support dropping and increasing number saying they won't vote for him, even more if he is found guilty and imprisoned. So what is likely to happen here, if he is allowed to run, is that the Republican Primary voters will nominate a candidate that can't possibly win.

So it may actually be good for the Dems if he is allowed to run and any 14th amendment claims denied by the Supreme Court. Him not being allowed to run may actually put someone in who is electable in a general election, although maybe not the first choice of Republican Primary voters one of the other candidates may attract back those Republican and independent voters who have sworn to never vote for Trump again.

[pipbarber]

Trump keeps boasting that every time he gets indicted his numbers go up, and that's true, among the Republican Primary voters they are polling, you see the issue here? They aren't even polling the rank and file Republican's, polls of non-republican voters show support dropping and increasing number saying they won't vote for him, even more if he is found guilty and imprisoned. So what is likely to happen here, if he is allowed to run, is that the Republican Primary voters will nominate a candidate that can't possibly win.

So it may actually be good for the Dems if he is allowed to run and any 14th amendment claims denied by the Supreme Court. Him not being allowed to run may actually put someone in who is electable in a general election, although maybe not the first choice of Republican Primary voters one of the other candidates may attract back those Republican and independent voters who have sworn to never vote for Trump again.

I think it would best if Trump contested the election too. If, and its unlikely, he is actually in prison during the election he may attract the absurdist vote and against, presumably sleepy Joe, you just never know. But Trump would be preferable to DeSantis, or Ramaswarmy. They're currently 2 and 3 on the list. So yeah, let him run is my view, but the conservative supreme court may decide against that. I'm sure that court is being heavily 'lobbied' to block Trump, by the old GOP. It is the only way they can stop him.

[pipbarber]

Robert Reich points out just how close this election will be (assuming Trump is running).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -trump-win

If candidates from No Labels, the Green party and the People’s party peel off just 15% of the anti-Trump vote from Biden, and Trump’s base stays with him, Trump would win all five swing states comfortably and return to the Oval Office.

It's the old third party question. Remembering how Ralph Nader gave us Bush over Al Gore it's tempting to curse them but i also find it hard to blame them. If ever a nation needed preferential voting.

[pipbarber]

Ever heard of a contingent election? The US electoral system reminds me of the cosplay formalities of putting Chuck on the throne last year. The word 'archaic' doesn't quite do it justice.

Anyway, if enough electoral college electors refuse to certify the winner in their state (which is increasingly possible) and no candidate ends up with the 270 college votes they need, then we get a 'contingent election.'

Each state delegation in the House of Representatives is given a single vote for president. Each state delegation in the Senate is given a single vote for vice-president.

Yes, so California gets one vote and so does Vermont, and so does Wyoming. And because the majority of states are GOP leaning, the GOP will win this 'contingent election,' lark.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... t-election

[joele]

So Trump keeps saying Biden is cognitively impaired yet he thinks (1) he beat Obama in 2016 (2) Biden will start world war TWO if left in office..

Ok can we move past this media obsession that Biden is impaired and somehow Trump isn't.. Trump is only 3 years younger and seems to screw up as much if not more..

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ction-2024

[stevebrooks]

Yeah it's bizarre. Biden is cognitively impaired, spends most of his time sleeping, the country is being run be Kamala, and yet at the same time he is the leader of the Biden Crime Family that has been so successful at hiding its tracks that no evidence has ever been found linking Biden to any crimes.....strange indeed. But then we know this is all for the followers, the ones who think Biden is to old (and let's face it they are both to old) and decrepit and the ones who think he is a criminal mastermind may indeed be the same people holding the two ideas separately, cognitive dissonance is big in MAGA Land!

[joele]

He just can't help himself.. lol.. what a sideshow, and this guy was president and may be again.. sigh..

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe on Monday suggested Donald Trump had thrown his own defense in his election obstruction case “not just under a bus but under a freight train” when he boasted to NBC’s Kristen Welker that it was his decision to challenge the 2020 result.

“It’s said sometimes that only a fool hires himself as a lawyer to defend himself. I don’t think Trump is a fool, but he’s certainly a narcissist,” he noted.

“He just has to say that he is responsible for everything. He doesn’t depend on anybody,” Tribe added. “That’s all very nice politically. But in the courtroom, he’s just blown that defense, the defense that I was just relying on my lawyers and therefore I didn’t have a state of mind that it takes to commit these crimes. He’s just blown that out of the water.”

Trump acknowledged to Welker on “Meet the Press” that he’d ignored the attorneys who told him that he should concede in 2020.

“I didn’t respect them,” Trump said. “In many cases, I didn’t respect them. But I did respect others. I respected many others that said the election was rigged.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/laurence ... 763ab6b87b

[pipbarber]

“Of all Trump’s implacable enemies, Murdoch had become a frothing-at-the-mouth one. His relatively calm demeanor from the early Trump presidency where, with a sigh, he could dismiss him merely as a ‘fucking idiot’ had now become a churning stew of rage and recrimination.

“Trump’s death became a Murdoch theme: “We would all be better off …? “This would all be solved if …” “How could he still be alive, how could he?” “Have you seen him? Have you seen what he looks like? What he eats?”

I love this story. Murdoch being driven insane by hatred of Trump! It's just too wonderful to not make a note of. The sweet schadenfreude of it all. It's all so Frankensteinian, I mean Rupert created Trump. Without Fox News, Trump would never in a million years have won the 2016 nomination. Trump is Rupert's monster. I actually read Shelley's Frankenstein for the first time recently, because i was intending to see Oppenheimer and i thought it might provide some cultural depth to the movie. You'll all recall, of course, that Dr.Frankenstein endures a morally agonizing death, while his monster is last seen heading for the north pole on a sled. Lets hope the analogy holds firm!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/ ... wolff-book

[stylofone]

I've lost the link now, but yesterday I was reading about the general desire from rank and file Democrats for someone younger than Biden, an issue privately acknowledged by individuals in the party machine, but the power structures mean that Biden is rusted on.

Meanwhile Trump is a serial election loser, and even Murdoch, a Frankenstein who helped create this monster, now hates his handiwork, but like the Democrats, he is stuck with his decaying corpse of a "leader". It's bizarre, we have a polarised two-party system where you hate your own leader slightly less than the other guy. I say "we" because it is pretty much the same in Australia.

Another part of it is that Albanese and Biden are personally innocuous, while Trump and Dutton are loathsesome in the extreme.

[Irrev-Black]

General Milley, protecting the US Constitution against Clowny.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... up/675375/