2024 Elections

If Republicans run the disgraced twice impeached single term former president again in 2024, Democrats should run Obama again.

Democrats are in such deep shit, with Biden's poll numbers and the highly-funded Russian opposition, that my earlier recommendation regarding Kamala Harris takes on new urgency.

Quote :

"Kamala Harris is a leader but is not being put in positions to lead. That doesn't make sense. We need to be thinking long term, and we need to be doing what's best for the party," said a top donor to Biden and other Democrats, imagining how to make the case directly to the President. "You should be putting her in positions to succeed, as opposed to putting weights on her. If you did give her the ability to step up and help her lead, it would strengthen you and strengthen the party."

1. Joe Biden should voluntarily step down, sometime next year
   
   
2. Harris takes over as Pres without needing to win an election
   
   
3. She gets to choose her own VP.  She should choose someone progressive: Stacy Abrams.  AOC.  Mayor Pete
   
   
4. After serving the last two years of the Biden term, the results of his agenda should make her popular enough to easily win re-election in '24
   
   
5. Having served less than two years of Biden's term, she is still eligible to serve two terms of her own -- so, ten years as president
   
   
6. With the progressives 100% behind her, and her agenda  winning over even the skeptics, the Russian influence on USA politics becomes a non-issue
   

Chris Hayes had a segment tonite that explained why DJT is the titular head of the Republican Party.

He has a loyal fan base of white nationalists, anti-immigration supporters, fascists, Fox Entertainment watchers, gun nuts, etc. These zealots make up only a small percentage, like 13%, of the Republican Party.

But if this faction leaves the Republican coalition, and follows DJT as an independent protest candidate, the GOP would be walloped by Democrats because they only command about 41% of the electorate overall. Trump loyalists aren’t numerous enough to win any elections on their own, but they’re crucial to keeping the slow decline of the GOP from becoming precipitous and immediately fatal.

Nobody likes Trump. Nobody wants him to set the agenda. But they’ll never win another election without him so they have to hold their noses and kiss his ring.

Amy Klobuchar was on one of the MSNBC talk shows this morning (Symone) and she predicted Democrats will pick up three Senate seats in the mid-terms.

Conventional wisdom says that's wrong.

But conventional wisdom doesn't have to account for Roe or gun rights or the environment, which the current crop of Republicans have defied public sentiment on.  Do you suppose women, and young people, and people of color will really come out of the woodwork and vote the rascals out?  Ordinarily I'd say no way, but this year?  Not so sure....

The 2022 mid-terms are anyone's guess, at this point.

Women are fired up, and registering in record numbers. They might pull off the impossible and hand the American Taliban a major defeat. Or they might stay home, or be prevented from voting.

If Republicans don't get the shit slapped out of them, the American Experiment (aka Democracy) is well and truly fucked. We'll be living in a nightmarish autocracy well before the 2024 elections... if there ARE 2024 elections.

NoCoPilot wrote:

If Republicans run the disgraced twice impeached single term former president again in 2024, Democrats should run Obama again.

Huh. I guess they can't.

Saudi Arabia really doesn't like Joe Biden. He's not as manipulable as Jared.

NoCoPilot wrote:

DJT has a loyal fan base of white nationalists, anti-immigration supporters, fascists, Fox Entertainment watchers, gun nuts, etc. These zealots make up only a small percentage, like 13%, of the Republican Party. But if this faction leaves the Republican coalition, and follows DJT as an independent protest candidate, the GOP would be walloped by Democrats because they only command about 41% of the electorate overall. Trump loyalists aren’t numerous enough to win any elections on their own, but they’re crucial to keeping the slow decline of the GOP from becoming precipitous and immediately fatal.

Trump is enough of a malignant narcissist to take this move. He was a lifelong Democrat before switching parties in 2009 (couldn't abide a nigger President I guess) so he has no loyalty to any party.  It would catapult him back into the headlines, allowing him to sustain his sinking empire with lots of unfettered donations.  That's all he cares about.

Which is why even Republicans may start calling for him to be barred from ever holding office again.

2024 is looking better and better for Democrats.

1. If Republicans elect a Republican to be Speaker of the House, the 2023 House will be so tied up in infighting and paralysis that voters will have little option but to declare the GOP dead
   
2. If Drumpf isn't in jail, and runs on a third party MAGA ticket, the GOP won't have enough voters left to elect a dogcatcher.

Trump is still the front runner for the GOP nomination.  If (when) his legal troubles multiply throughout the rest of 2023, Republicans are increasingly going to feel he's an albatross.

They're afraid to abandon him, for the reason noted above, but if he's taken out the race by something or someone else, they probably wouldn't mind.

Which begs the question: who's second in line?  Not Ron DeSantis.  He's becoming toxic even to hard core radical extremists.

Who else?  I haven't heard any names that sound like possibilities.

And?  If the new candidate does distance herself and the party from the abortion issue, it won't matter WHO the Republicans run.  That one issue will sink any candidate that's even remotely lukewarm on it.

It will be interesting to watch if Fucker Carlson decides to run for president. He has all he needs to be a candidate (enough money, plenty of name recognition, plenty of fans) that would run in exactly the same lane as Trump. Yes, he would be just as incompetent as Trump, but that isn't a disqualifying factor for Republicans.

The battle of two old white men.

Obama brought tons of non-white voters out, and won substantial margins in the non-white vote.  All of the voter suppression efforts the GOP is undertaking are aimed at preventing non-white voters from voting.  If only white voters vote, the likelihood of an old white man getting elected are better.

So WHY THE FUCK aren't the Democrats running a Black candidate???

There are LOTS of excellent candidates.  Tons that would win white votes as well as non-white votes.  It makes absolutely no sense to counter Black voter suppression with a slate of candidates that Black voters can't even get apathetic about.

Grrr.

Not an Onion offering, even though it looks like one.

Tucker Carlson receives a job offer from Russian state TV after Fox News firing

Someone else commented "Didn't he just get fired from a Russian propagandist job?".

NoCoPilot wrote:

Saudi Arabia really doesn't like Joe Biden. He's not as manipulable as Jared.

And they'll be doing everything in their power between now and the election to try to get their guy back in.

[Heavy sigh.] Remember when we had a candidate, and later a president, we were actually excited about?

Now we're faced with a choice between which candidate we hate the least. Why is politics so full of stupid choices, when exciting candidates exist?

JFC. The whole country has gone nuckin' futs.

Democrats need a slogan for 2024.

Quote :

Democracy for ALL the people, not just the old rich white guys.

Pence dropped out today, because refusing to overturn the 2020 election is a disqualifier.

Quote :

Pence was distrusted by the bloc of GOP voters who are devoted followers of former President Donald Trump following Pence’s refusal to go along with Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt.

New theory: Trump doesn't really want to win in 2024, he's just trying to use the ploy of running for office as a way to stay out of jail.  And to raise a bunch of money. It's just another grift.

Remember, he filed as a candidate for 2020 on his first day in office in 2016.

And it was widely reported in 2017 that he hadn't meant to win in 2016, had no plan to govern. He was just "enhancing the brand" and trying to raise a shit-ton of money.

Latest hand-wringing worry is third party presidential candidates.  Either Jill Stein from the Green Party, or Joe Manchin or Mitt Romney from the No Labels Party, could siphon away votes from the two leading but hugely-unpopular candidates.  The question becomes, if a third party becomes a spoiler, whose campaign would they spoil?

Trump has a small but rabidly-loyal base.  They're not going to be dissuaded.

There's a larger number of "hold-your-nose-and-vote-Republican" voters who dislike Biden and liberalism. They might be persuadable.

And then there are the Biden voters, most of whom -- almost ALL of whom I would postulate -- would gleefully vote for anyone besides Biden as long as he or she wasn't Trump.

So again, we need a candidate -- Democratic or independent -- whom voters would get excited about. Somebody/anybody who could beat Trump at his own populist appeal, without being a closet Nazi.

They're out there.  Now who'd be dumb enough to actually do it?

I think most Democrats will vote Biden, despite everything, as long as Trump is on the ballot.

Liz Cheyney may run as an independent, seeking to siphon the non-MAGA Republicans away from Trump.

Nightmare Scenario

When I wake up in the middle of the night, it's thoughts like these that make it hard to go back to sleep.

1. Third party candidate(s) spoil the 2024 election
   
2. Allowing Trump to win with less than 40% of the votes
   
3. As he promised he would, he invokes the Insurrection Act on inauguration day to deal with the massive rioting across the country
   
4. However, the military refuses to carry out his order. They have said they will not engage against US citizens
   
5. Military coup
   
6. Trump's vice president, Tucker Carlson, is deemed not competent to take over
   
7. Wishing to honor "the will of the people" the next Republican in line is Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House
   
8. Who believes we are in End Times, and god is about to punish all of us for our wickedness
   
9. Johnson establishes a religious autocracy, with all secular institutions suspended
   

Trump says he intends to invoke the Insurrection Act on day one of his presidency. If he says it, we should take him seriously.

He intends to put down demonstrations and riots following his apparent election victory. If he says it, we should take him seriously. The likelihood of riots is fairly high. The likelihood of a suspicious election is fairly high.

I've always hoped the military brass -- which rebuked Trump's attempts to misuse the military in his first term -- would stand up to such a blatant attempt to grab dictatorial powers. Rachel Maddow, in her recent interview with Chris Hayes on TV, pointed out that the Insurrection Act wouldn't require Trump to deploy troops to any American cities or the border.  Merely invoking it would make Trump a dictator.

But fuck me.  59% of active duty military personnel voted for Trump in 2020? That's horrifying.  Maybe he WILL get away with it.