HAHAHAHAHAHAA now THIS is a great joke

Trump's campaign team sure as hell didn't wait very long to take the gloves off.

“INSPIRING THOUGHTS FROM KAMALA HARRIS” pic.twitter.com/khckWY5x7f

— Dan Scavino Jr.🇺🇸🦅 (@DanScavino) June 30, 2024

They've already done that, for decades. Most voters ignore them. That'll continue to happen, almost certainly.

Why would you pick someone who alienates the base? I don't think there are a lot of Joe Manchin fans out there.

seriously Manchin is a turd. WOrst idea ever. STOP PICKING CENTRISTS

The VP picture is kind of interesting from a game theory perspective. People like Whitmer and Shapiro might want to wait till 2028, but waiting often screws you over. A lot can change in 4 years and I think sitting back and hoping the seas part for you is a dangerous strategy.

Especially when abortion is their strongest issue. Why on Earth would you make someone who isn't exactly a pri-choice politician your VP?

Another name I'll throw out is JB Pritzker. I don't think he has a shot because he isn't tied in enough with the donor class, but he'd be a solid pick. Real strong on abortion and a really savvy politician. And he just comes across as a jolly guy which isn't a bad person to have on the ticket.

Shapiro would probably help them the most in important states but he also comes with some risk.

WHITMER! THAT'S the name I was trying to think of. She shares death threats and attempts with trump :)


She is pretty hated by the right.

are you kidding....a lot can change in 4 DAYS!

We need more centrists & moderates … from both sides.

I’m not bought into Kamala but can live with her. Assume she’ll continue Joe’s policies but do need to hear more from her on illegal immigration, China, taxes etc. But I do want to see some competition and who else we can pick.

so you want chaos....got it. um....I mean MORE chaos

You can just be a Republican man. It's not that big of a deal.

If we got more centrists & moderates from both sides, it’ll be less chaos than what we have now with extremists from both sides.

Article below said Pelosi talked to Joe on Sat and implied her call helped him make the decision. But then Pelosi’s office denied there was even a call. Interesting, I’m sure it’ll all come out with time but I tend to believe she did make a call or communicate to Joe or did it indirectly.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/21/pelo...-election.html

I definitely lean one way or another on issues but overall, I consider myself moderate & independent.

World would be a better place if both sides learn to compromise on majority of issues.

Democrats have been run by moderates since we were born. Who are these non-centrists running the Democratic Party these days that need to compromise?

And they don't need to compromise because both parties largely share the same positions outside of a few social issues. Those social issues are important but most everything else has been settled.

Her stance on China, taxes and immigration that you're waiting on are going to be roughly the same as Biden's. Which is roughly the same as Trump's. Which is the same as just about every leader from both sides in Washington.

There are social issues that differ but the things you're asking about have been decided no matter who wins.

We are really just choosing the option which is not trying to undo any and all democracy we have left and setting things back 150 years.

I love how Trump said his new strategy was to bring people together, and that strategy lasted for as long as he kept reading the speechwriter's words. The moment he went off script, it was the usual Trump. And they're already on the attack against Harris, so I suppose that the strategy has already been forgotten.

*highfive*
THIS!

Joe Manchin dropped out fast. He said this morning on CNN that everything was "leading toward" his running, but an hour later on Gail King he said he is not, but wanting an open primary. He had less than zero chance as it was, but wonder who stopped him?

perhaps his mother telling him to stop being such an attention seeking troll all the time

ya know I don't care who runs at this point, just say somethiong ANYTHINHG positive. And keep saying it and keep pounding it. And point out all the shitheads that keep grifting the country.

dola....can they please NOT use "I'm with her" as a campaign slogan again?

Over 70 million now

An 84 year old telling an 82 year old not to run for re-election when she ran for re-election at 83 tells you everything you need to know about this stupid country.

The misogyny of the GOP is going to bury them. The personal attacks on Harris are not going to sit well with women.

Matthew Yglesias writes a blog and made a good point about whether the liberal faction of the Democratic party is going to allow Harris to moderate her image in ways she needs to, to combat the perception that she's a CA liberal and become more electable to the general population. Trump's "allowed to do that" score is off the charts because he can take abortion off the table or speak kindly about EVs to gain Elon's money, and the GOP doesn't blink. But Hillary was partially sunk by the lefty whining and Biden ran on a "unity" message in response. Harris has to moderate but also keep the lefties from getting pissed she's not selling them out. She can't win otherwise.

To be fair, she is a helluva a lot more lucid than Biden, not a high bar, but even more so than he was 4 years ago.

Point remains though, nobody past the age of retirement should be in politics at any level.

70 million...spiders?

Thankfully Republicans want to do away with retirement.

what i found total bullshit was seeing an article saying Pelosi says biden will probably drop out this weekend. That was horrible. SO humiliating thing to post. She should NOT EVER talk to the press saying shit like this as if it's her decision. THat was really disgusting

She probably had a conversation with him where he agreed to drop out later but she was afraid he’d forget so she put it out there so he had to stick to his word. I’m just guessing. It’s pretty clear the party was pretty floored with his mental decline once he stopped being able to hide it.

Hillary was sunk by being a really shitty and unlikable politician for 30 years. I don't know why we need to keep making excuses for her 8 years after her failure.

Jared Moskowtz's questioning of the secret service director shows there's not going to be any accountability. She refused to commit to firing anyone if the investigation shows who was at fault for the breakdowns and wouldn't even commit to a hypothetical resignation if the assassination attempt had been successful.

Biden needs to fire her.

I think it had more to do with his poll numbers.

If his mental decline were that bad, they'd be asking him to resign.

I understand why the GOP is going after Biden, but it's pretty easy to make the argument that bring both president and a candidate is a lot, plus this is also about whether he could be president in 2027 or 28. It could, but doesn't have to, have anything to do with his fitness to be president today.

The sad thing is the Democrats have probably their strongest stable of candidates they've had in decades. Just loaded with young, popular Governors. If Biden had stepped aside earlier, it would have been a really good primary and Dems would be incredibly strong.

For VP, I think I've decided I want Beshear. Pritzker would be good too but I don't think the establishment would accept him. Shapiro would be strong but has more risk. Beshear is also really good in interviews and speaking to the public. He'd destroy Vance in a debate and be someone you could send around the country talking in the Rust Belt and more rural areas. Just listen to this answer and remember he's in Kentucky and it worked.




Tim Burchett blames the assassination attempt on DEI hires.

There was an article that came out yesterday in WSJ or Politico over the weekend that said the Biden campaign had not done internal polling in 2 months. They got back results the other day and he was just getting destroyed everywhere. Was like tied in Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and New Mexico. Only up 3% in New Jersey.

Joe's a narcissist and I can't fathom that the decision was based on a talk from Nancy Pelosi. I think it had more to do with him realizing this was going to be a humiliating defeat and it was time to bail and leave the mess he caused for everyone else.

Take it for what it is but Kamala's team is promoting this interview and the Lt Gov in Kentucky said they're ready to take over. Sure sounds like he's the frontrunner and he's been going hard at JD Vance.




JD Vance is probably going to turn out to be a bad pick. Trump likely thought he had the election in the bag so it was safe to double down on maga. VP picks usually don't matter but presidential candidates usually try to mitigate their weaknesses and go with safe picks.

The dems having a more balanced ticket and a much stronger VP may end up helping.

I am sure that the GOP will get its feet back under it, but I am surprised by how Biden deciding to not contend for the nomination seemingly caught them by surprise.

It was all anyone was talking about since the debate.

Beshear is excellent. He is the kind of politician who puts aside politics in times of crisis. On a national level we may be beyond people being able to claim a president or VP from the other side without thinking they are the devil, but he managed to do that in this state. Of course it helped he was from here and his dad was governor.

I almost think he's too nice for 2020s national politics. During COVID people were calling him Howdy Dowdy and Mr. Rodgers because of how Pollyanna he was about being on "Team KY" and doing what's right for your neighbors. You know, those antiquated concepts that don't play well in the media and with most people who want mean-spirited entertainment from their politicians.

You are not wrong there. I doubt that Harris would have came out of a primary. She might have. You can't under estimate the benefit of being the sitting Vice President, but I do believe people for the most part want a change of guard. Someone like Beshears or Whitmer or Mark Kelly would have been interesting.

Trump probably assumed most people are like him and he couldn't fathom stepping aside, so why would Joe? But yeah, it seems the campaign only started thinking about how to take on Harris (or anyone other than Joe) within the past 10 days or so.

When he starts claiming "fraud" and whining that they have to start over with campaigning against a new candidate, you know they wanted Joe to stay in and are scared of the potential upside of Harris or anyone other than Joe.

I don't think that word means what you think it means. Trump is a narcissist. He can only see the world in Trump colors. If Trump was handed bad polls, he wouldn't believe them. Nothing Trump ever does is wrong, and he always wins or someone cheated.
Biden has a big ego, but anyone that believes they can be president has. He for sure has a good bit of hubris to think a year ago he had four more years in him. But if he was a narcissist he would have never stepped down.

The spotlight has suddenly shifted to him being the old candidate. His campaign got the media and everyone so worked up over Joe's age that it might bite him in the ass now that Joe is out. He also has to figure out how to attack a black woman without damaging support from a group he's spent a lot of effort courting.

Stephen Miller was having a meltdown on Fox News the other night. They went from having this in the bag to it being a race.

80 million

He will never be liberal enough for you. He's likely to be the last Dem governor of Kentucky for my lifetime. He can't run anymore, and his power has been neutered by the house and senate. They will surely cede power back once a republican is in charge and then KY will just be back on the crazy train again.



Andy is super popular here, but I don't think that means he helps carry KY. He is moderate enough to understand that there is power in teamwork and cooperation and that even when you lose, you can still win, keep a strong positive attitude, and push for the next thing. He's been great here, and was a trend setter nationally through covid.



I figure if I'm on board and like him, that should be enough for you to say he's far too establishment and like all the other politicians you aren't fond of either.

MAGA land claiming Kamala Harris isn't black is an odd choice of attack.

PredictIt odds...

Shapiro .32
Beshear .27
Cooper .22
Kelly .15
Buttigieg .07
Whitmer .04
Pritzker .03
Walz .02

They can't stop threatening violence...

Some very dangerous rhetoric here from Ohio State Senator George Lang at JD Vance’s rally:

“I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country.” pic.twitter.com/wZIDx1Yt9J

— Yashar Ali �� (@yashar) July 22, 2024

I’m only 50% certain Biden is still alive.

Bipartisanship is alive! Both the Chairman and the ranking member of the Committee of Oversight and Accountability signed a letter stating the head of the Secret Service should resign.

If Biden were dead, that would lock the election down. It would be worth a 3-5% bump in the polls at least. Can you imagine? A state funeral, the image of Harris swearing in, Harris no longer running as a candidate but the incumbent? The last thing they would want to hide is that he is dead.

That would depend on how he died ... or at least, how confident they were that nothing other than the official version would be revealed before the election.

Searches for “is Joe Biden Alive” are definitely up. I’m guessing he’s fine (his doctor says he’s doing great, fwiw) and the secrecy is all part of the dramatic flair of what’s happening. It’s like Clooney is directing this episode.

Like sleeping with porn star? I can't think way he could have died that possibily would be an issue. He is 82. Covid could have easily killed him, or even a simple fall in the shower. It really wouldn't make a difference.

It would if they were pressuring him to quit & he keeled over.

And that's the kinder gentler version of something that wouldn't go over well.

With those folks, much worse is within the realm of possibility (and will be suspected anyway).

No it wouldn't. They literally have the excuse. He has Covid. An 82 dying of Covid wouldn't cause non-nuts to bat an eye. You have to be steeped in some pretty deep crazy conspiracy stuff to believe something else. The simplest way would be the best way to silence a conspiracy, and at this point the easiest solution has sailed.

This is so the honeymoon period for Harris. The third day story is going to hit hard.

I've said I like Beshear. He is a liberal which I am not, so I don't know how him being more liberal would persuade me. He's not going to flip Kentucky by any means but he will do well in the Rust Belt is my guess. A pretty sharp distinction from Vance who looks down on people in that region.

The fact he actually stands on his principles even in a deep red state makes him better than 99% of Democrats in power right now. Barring some major changes in policy, I'd vote for a Harris/Beshear ticket since there isn't a viable 3rd party candidate.

I'm telling you, if Harris was in the room during that discussion and his heart stopped .. you think you had trouble before? Biden's numbers would look like optimism compared to what would happen.

Hell, what happened to Dorito Dotty today on the Hill would look like a coronation compared to what would happen.

I need to hear Kamala's views on Hannibal Lecter before making a decision

But we know she wasn't because he was in Delaware and she was not. You know they record every time he or she gets on and off a plane, right? I mean, "if Hillary was in the room....."


Again, they had the opportunity, and all of this would have been a million times easier if he had died. It makes zero sense to cover it up now. Not to mention he has to come out to speak sometime. If he doesn't after saying he has improved, that is what will look bad.

Speaking of which, she is in Delaware now at the campaign headquarters. Does she leave that there, or move it to California? It probably makes sense to leave it. It is close to DC, and all the major NW cities.

I wonder if Trump would have picked someone different from Vance if he knew Biden would drop out.

It has been buzzing around today. It does make you think he probably wishes he had someone more palatable to suburban moms instead of the guy who openly antagonistic to them.

I think he for sure would have. I think it is why Biden waited until after to drop out.

Even when he does it will just be a lizard person in a Joe Biden suit. Everybody knows this

The lizard person just called into the staff meeting that Harris was having. He said he supports her completely and he really needs more mice.

Yeah, someone like Stefanik would have made more sense. Even Huckabee-Sanders.

One of the issues with Harris for them is they can't help but be weird about it. It's easy to attack Biden for being old and being in mental decline. Easy to tie inflation and bad foreign policy to him too. All legit attacks that resonate with voters.

But you can already see the attacks on Harris are weird. Saw someone make a big deal that she doesn't have kids. Saw Eastman put out a thing about how she's not eligible and starting up a new birther debate. There's going to be a lot of racist and misogynistic attacks. Plays well to the base but as we've seen, suburbanites hate that shit.

Despite all the talk about policy and positions, I think elections come down to who is less weird about stuff.

This is like bad political sitcom writing. Fox and Friends ran a bumper that read "Kamala could be the oldest elected female President"

Ya think?

Much like Obama she's both too black and not black enough.

dola

Just on time, we're starting the MIGRANT CARAVAN stories.

Trump has never tried for the female vote. The conservative/christian women are already voting for him and I don't think a VP pick is swaying the rest. He uses the VP strategically to help get a swing state. Trump's campaign has always been to motivate his likely voters and try to get those of his opponent to stay home. He was able to do that vs Hillary and not vs Biden.

We will see how it does with Harris, but I don't think there are a large group of undecided women going "You know, I just wish Trump had a better VP so I could vote for him" :D

Yep. In general some people seem to be way over-valuing the importance of VP.

The only data we have as to a boost is a small boost in the VP's home state. Otherwise, it hasn't mattered and probably won't matter this year.

The sample size for downright terrible VP picks is rather small. Most candidates tend to make very safe picks that sure up support in areas of weakness.

Palin is an example of a really bad VP pick and studies have estimated her costing McCain about 1.5% of the vote.

Everything in a campaign is an accumulative effect. People try to qualify things using polls and such, but there is really no way to exactly measure what action played on the next action played on the next action that allowed the final action to sink in to make a final decision. Maybe the VP decision itself didn't make the difference, but then maybe it is the butterfly effect that makes something else more a positive or a negative than it would have been without it.
2016 was decided by 80,000 votes in three states. He basically lost in 2020 by the same number. With those types of margins of error, even the color of a flier might have made a difference.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

Today I was listening to SiriusXM political news. The Patriot channel (republican) persecution complex happening is next level. Same as my "For You" tab on X. The deep state kidnapped Joe Biden and turned him into a zombie so that Kamala could fake her blackness to try and trick the secret service into assassinating Trump. Wow. It's exhausting.

Reminds me of this all-timer:

https://www.azquotes.com/picture-quo...-115-21-47.jpg

According to AP, Harris already has enough pledged delegates to win the nomination.

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Incredible.

Saw this on Reddit and chuckled

Joe is the new Schrödinger’s cat

Joe, you did the right thing. Thank you. If Kamala wins you’ll be remembered fondly. If she loses, not so much but better than being the next, not quite so bad, Walter Mondale.

- I'm not complaining about the process not being democratic so much as the claims that Trump must be defeated to save democracy - and we're going to do so by not being democratic. The primary process has always been primarily and overwhelmingly democratic - things like superdelegates are never where the strong majority comes from. The people ultimately choose. As I've said before, I'm more a fan of limited democracy and even that is slowly dying; authoritarianism is in our future IMO not because I want it to be, but because we're on an inevitable path to it IMO. But I left the Republican party because they were no longer pretending to defend our institutions. Well, guess what? Shoe's on the other foot now. It already was largely there, but there were still elements of hope in my mind that Democrats were interested in preserving the Republic. Just win at any cost is not acceptable to me. Abandoning the clearly expressed will of the people is not acceptable to me. I'll probably still vote Harris ... but if I do it will only be anti-Trump, and it will probably be the last time.

To your point earlier about the cancelled primaries (from what I know the number of those was different but that's beside the point) and such; sure, the party can do things like that and send other messages that they don't want competition. But the point is, they can't get away with that unless the party voters tolerate it. There were no significant protests when that happened, campaigns to 'draft' a serious alternative to Biden, or anything of the kind. They just said 'eh, whatever'. The people still had the power to make it happen, they just chose to allow the party to exercise it on their behalf.

I'm really surprised about your last paragraph here. Primary voters don't just vote for delegates, in the same way that general election voters don't just vote for electors. They voted for Joe Biden as president. It's not as if the delegates/electors reasonably have the option to say 'you know, I think the voters were wrong, we're picking someone else instead'. The expectation, and to date result, is always 'this candidate won the state, those delegates are pledged to that candidate', regardless of how the delegates feel about it.


I don't see the difference between party and country here. It's as fundamental as anything could be to be able to choose the candidate. Otherwhise we might as well have the vote be based on party only and then have the winning party just pick the candidate after the election. The people deciding who they want to represent/be nominated from their party is as basic as it gets. It simply makes no sense to defend the idea of general-election democracy, but not primary-process democracy. Undermining one is undermining the other.

The number of people comfortable calling for Biden to 'do the right thing' in nullifying in historic fashion the process that selected him in the first place - twice - is just mystifying. Many of them could probably care less, and quite possibly they shouldn't, but those people have lost quite a bit of respect from me in terms of how much I value their opinions.

I'm trying to pick something as narrow as possible to springboard/spitball an idea, this seems like as good an opportunity as any.

I'm wondering if what we're seeing here -- the replacement of a struggling candidate essentially -- isn't going to become the norm rather quickly.

I mean, it puts the opposition at a real disadvantage, having to pivot a great deal of their strategy, their (already created & planned) advertising, on and on and so forth.

It's kind of like ... well, hockey line matching and who gets their line last is the example that came to mind.

Since obviously this is being meekly accepted, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it become commonplace.

I don't think so.

As a party-wide game theory thing, it makes sense for the reasons you lay out. But to effectuate it, you need individuals to make choices that I don't see them making.

You need the candidate who won a majority of pledged delegates to withdraw before the convention and hand-pick a successor.

I just don't see someone who has gone through an entire primary and won thinking to themselves "Well, I'm down 2 points in Ohio. Better step aside for the good of the country."

I think that Biden's situation is seeming increasingly likely to be medical. That just won't happen a lot.

dola

Here's the conspiracy theory I came up with that I'm noodling over:

Someone (or someones) in Biden's inner circle knew that he was in much worse shape than people (perhaps even he) realized. And that there were some other folks in the inner circle who thought that they could Weekend at Bernie's this thing through the election. Which was never going to work.

So the folks who knew that this was going to be a disaster were the ones who scheduled a June debate (remember when that was announced how weird it was? And people just thought that it was Biden's plan to shake up the race?). And then remember how after the debate, Biden said that his staff kept him up studying and he didn't get enough sleep?

My tin-foil hat theory is that some inner-circle people set him up to fail in an early debate so that he'd have to drop out before the convention.

I believe there is NO party that wouldn't go to whatever means necessary if they wanted to swap candidates. Whether that's arm twisting, more significant coercion, or a tragic brake failure.

double dola:

I understand not wanting Harris. She's actually pretty far down my list of preferred candidates. But I literally don't understand the criticism that what is happening is undemocratic.

Voters elected delegates, most of whom were pledged to Biden.
Biden withdraws before the convention and frees up his delegates.
Most of them have indicated that they will vote for Harris.
The DNC is allowing anyone to compete for delegates

What am I missing?

That seems like the plot of a very fun beach read :-)

The narrative they are trying to paint is Joe was forced out against his will. The reality is the gop is scared shitless by this and until they craft a new strategy all they can do is attack the process.

Reasonable. Someone here posted the first debate dates for the past like 30 years and I swear none were before late August as I recall.

Tactically, the only thing that makes sense is they knew he was behind and needed time to catch up, so they hoped an early debate would give him some momentum. But if they saw him day-to-day, it's hard to believe they thought that would work.

Space lasers.

I covered this in my post. At this point I will ask an honest question: what does the word 'democratic' mean? Because it clearly doesn't mean the same thing to me that it does to you.

I think the difference comes in how one views Biden's exit.

I see him as having been convinced to not challenge for the nomination.

You, I suspect, see him as having been forced out.

To my mind, why he left is not relevant.

The delegates choosing a candidate that nobody voted for as their presidential candidate is what is undemocratic.