The AP removed that article with no explanation which actually makes the whole thing even funnier.

Mostly agree. It's just a list of things conservatives have talked about for decades. And the Heritage Foundation has lost most of its influence in Washington so it's funny to see them being trotted out as a boogeyman.

With that said, it's incredibly fucking stupid to put all your unpopular ideas like that down on a document that can be shared. Can't blame the Democrats for taking advantage of that massive blunder.

someone chaised down the rumor and found the info only went sofa

Bringing back residential schools is pretty wild. So is complaining that the military isn't white enough. And it's not eliminating beauracratic jobs. It's firing non-partisan beauracrats and replacing them with partisan yes men that will ignore regulations and laws that serve as roadblocks for conservative goals.

If you look at each thing individually then, yeah, most of them have been conservative goals for a long time. However, when you put those things together to serve as a playbook for how to create and authoritarian, Christian nationalist regime you take it a bit more seriously.

And more. They have actually created a data bank of people who has sworn allegiance and are willing to step into those jobs. I just can't imagine how people don't see that as alarming.

Same people who cry about DEI and demand a meritocracy.

I don't think Trump has much to do with policy at all. That's Stephen Miller's job.

Trump is actually fairly liberal himself. He just cares more about power and money than any social beliefs. Any time he speaks off the cuff and proposes policy he ends up walking it back because his base hates his ideas. He was pro vax, has been pro abortion, and talked about offering citizenship to non citizen college grads.

I think that's an obscene exaggeration. It also gives me the impression of not really taking seriously how Democrat rhetoric appears to people who are, say, roughly similar to Jon or to the right of him politically. Some of it even to independents. I'm not saying I would expect liberals to like or support the aims of Project 2025; I'm saying there's a massive lack of perspective and proportion going on here.

Let me put it this way: Make two columns. Column A is the stuff Trump has said personally. Column B is Project 2025. Column A is massively worse; it isn't close.

An executive takeover of the FBI, elimination of the dept of education, banning science based education to push biblical teaching, firing government employees and hiring people that have signed a pledge of fealty to the administration, along with the other items would 100% be a Christian national takeover through authoritarian means.

There's a reason the guy that authored it said it's a bloodless civil war if the left allows it.

It's amazing that you have the dems way of selecting Kamala Harris as a deal breaker for voting dem for the foreseeable future but dems shouldn't take what conservatives are saying that they want to do as seriously because that's somehow just Democrat rhetoric.

That's literally not what I said. I think they should take it seriously. I'm saying it's being blown massively out of proportion, esp. in compared to what Trump has already said and done.

I think there's a lot of "look out for the Project 2025 Boogeyman" if Trump gets elected. A lot of the things in that document have been goals by conservatives for years. They just aren't practical and are red meat for the base and that's it. I'm sure Trump would love to abolish term limits, get rid of both congresses and declare himself "King Trump" - but that doesn't make it anymore likely of happening.

I’m not real sure how you fact check if a guy had sex with a sofa anyway. I mean there should only be two witnesses and I don’t think the sofa is talking so at best the headline should be that he denies having sex with a sofa.

From what I can tell, some twitter troll made up story that on a certain page of his book, Vance said he had sex with his sofa. Once someone actually read the book (and the page referenced), they saw it was false. Pretty funny that so many people ran with it without verifying it was true. Then again, it isn't completely unbelievable with Vance on the surface.

The amusing part to me:

- People make false accusations about Harris: disgusting, how dare they (this is the correct response)
- People make false accusations about Vance: lol that's hilarious.

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

There certainly was a double standard here. I just can't believe the AP ran with it without atleast checking the book first. But the motto is to be first, not necessarily right.

Come up with something funny about Harris, and I will laugh. I have laughed about stuff with Biden. Having a sense of humor is non-partisan.

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That's how overturning Roe v. Wade used to be described

I don't think a sense of humor applies to false accusations, period.

Satirizing actual things they've done, traits they have, whatever is another matter.

Probably because Vance is already saying horrific shit about Harris.

Karma is funny like that

Nothing is practical until you get the right people in or out of the right places and that's the whole point of Project 2025. To get rid of the impediments and put in the true believers.

Remember

Unless they specifically say they support X

You cannot infer that they might or do

If they end up supporting X you have to be real surprised because they didn't say that they did


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I think the guy who tells the story of Obama getting blown in a car by another guy at Gurnee Mills is funny. Hillary drinking children's blood is funny.

Then again I grew up with the Richard Gere and gerbils story. They're just dumb things people pass around for a laugh. It's not that serious.

"I don't think a sense of humor applies to false accusations, period."

But it wasn't a real accusation. The whole thing was/is funny because of how stupid it was. There were no couches harmed in the making of this joke.

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It absolutely was a real accusation. All you have to do is look at the links mentioned in this thread (there are many others of course) about how it was covered by the media.

100% irrelevant.

Vance can, and should be, and I do, be criticized for those things he says that are worthy of criticism. That does not justify one scintilla of false accusation towards him. Otherwhise you abandon the moral standing to be offended when anyone falsely accuses 'your candidate' (in this case my candidate as well, but whether that's the case or not).

This whole 'we hate them, so it doesn't matter how we treat them' is wrong no matter who does it, towards who, and in whatever circumstance. It is never appropriate.

Edit: It's the same as when the majority of this board, when Trump was president, said he wasn't owed any credit for anything he did regardless of what it was, because even on those rare occasions when he happened to do something 'good', he was doing it for the wrong reasons. My response was, is, and will continue to be ok, don't be surprised when nobody wants to give Biden or whoever else credit for what they do, since you've established not liking someone is justification for blanket criticism across the board.

I think the Harris campaign is attacking Vance because they know that will actually disrupt Trump more than attacks on Trump.

"It absolutely was a real accusation. All you have to do is look at the links mentioned in this thread (there are many others of course) about how it was covered by the media."

You mean the article they literally said it didn't happen? That article?

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Politics ain't beanbag.

Among others, yes. What I posted had a bad implication, and I apologize for that. I should have considered the way I phrased it more.

To back up a bit, I think we may have a difference on what a 'real accusation' is. In modern media, it's literally anything that achieves a certain amount of circulation. The whole Mark Twain line about a lie getting halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get it's pants on. There are no watchdogs, Big Media doesn't control this anymore. I.e. the more extreme Q/Deep State/whatever stuff isn't any less a 'real accusation' just because the legacy media isn't parroting it.

I'm not blaming AP or similar for leveling or spreading it. A sizable amount of people regularly get their news from social media. The fact that it grew to a point where the AP felt means it was already a real accusation. I don't blame the media, I blame modern society in general and the desperate search for anything that makes one's opponent look bad, no matter how absurd it is. You've even got that going on in this thread, a la 'it's Vance, so who knows'. Which is exactly the wrong way to evaluate these things.

Or you could lighten up. I never even for half a second took it seriously, and even if say someone would, so what? What happens between a man and his vouch us his own business. Absolutely no law against furniture love.

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The so what is evidenced in:

- the response to it in this thread, as I've discussed, which mirrors the response is many other places.

- the fact that false information spreading and people taking it seriously is always a problem.

This is not something where IMO it is appropriate to lighten up. The opposite is appropriate.

Boy, you must be a blast at parties.

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I heard Kamala couldn't stop laughing at the couch joke.

Man you never miss a chance to display you moral superiority.

You wouldn't last 90 seconds with my friends...They may not even let you in to Jersey.

Honestly I’m not convinced of anything until we hear from the couch. In the absence of the couch coming out and clearing Vance I will just form my own opinion. The AP is fake news anyway.

I don't think I'm morally superior. I think I'm someone with a different opinion, and that's all.

By contrast, your posts recently have called people assholes for having a different opinion, said they aren't paying attention if they disagree with you, etc.

We all need to do our own research

I never called anyone an asshole and not paying attention isn't a different opinion. At best it is making an uninformed opinion

I'd like to see Column A.

I just want to get things straight. We are not supposed to take what Trump and his ally put down in writing as their plans for a second term seriously, but some random poster saying J.D. Vance had sex with a couch we must take as gospel? Right.

Facts are stubborn things.



One of multiple examples.

In my opinion, neither: You absolutely should take what's in writing seriously as I've already said, and I definitely don't advocate taking what anyone says as gospel.

Indeed.

2005


2008



But I'm sure none of the stuff on the Project 2025 list will come to pass....

She fucked over most of what she fought for, in a clear example of how too many Democrats/progressives value "being right" over "winning".

At the beginning of Obama's second term, in 2012, RBG was 79. Well past retirement age, a cancer survivor, and right at average U.S. life expectancy. Rehnquist, the first Justice to die on the bench in 50 years, was 81 when he passed in 2005.

Since FDR, it is not common for a two-term President to be succeeded by a President from his own party. Only George H.W. Bush has done it.

In addition, while Democrats gained a couple of seats in 2012 (for a majority of 53), they had lost 6 in 2010.

Absolutely the most prudent thing to do, should she have wanted to preserve the legacy of civil rights she fought for over decades, would have been to retire at that point. Indeed, two very recent examples showed the way: both John Paul Stevens & David Souter retired early in Obama's first term, to be replaced by Justices who shared their outlook.


Yes, RBG's accomplishments are extremely significant. But equally significant is that through self-interest, ego, naivete (or other, take your pick), her inability to understand the above and assure a like-minded successor will likely result in the rolling back of much of that body of work, an effort that spanned decades.


Lastly, there's also an argument out there that with her husband dead (he died in 2010), her life was her work. Again, she had a recent example to go on. Retired Supreme Court Justices are entitled to sit by designation on lower courts. Souter continued to sit for a couple of months each year on the 1st District for years after his retirement. For years after her retirement from the SCOTUS, Sandra Day O'Connor sat on the 2nd, 8th, and 9th Circuits. Both had active memberships on boards of a wide variety of organizations close to their hearts.

Imagine what a self-admitted workaholic RBG could have done in those last 8 years to mentor and inspire a new generation of jurists in her image, while retaining a voice in the law.

All of that, now lost.

I apologize. I thought you meant in the context of the current discussion.

I'm from Jersey. We call a lot of people assholes.

Trump backs out of the debate. Not surprising but good lord. They were picking out cabinet members a couple weeks ago to this.

Doing the debate so early with Biden and picking Vance as VP will go down as two of the biggest blunders in American political history.

Apology not necessary, but accepted.

My point was, it not news that we disagree, or that most other people on this board disagree with me. I do get very sick of this moral superiority accusation when I think many on the board, yourself included, do that far more than I do, and when it's directed at a post where it simply does not apply. I'm definitely a flawed human being/poster/community member. Some things I should post differently, others I probably shouldn't post at all. But am I going to defend myself when unfairly and IMO hypocritically attacked.

JD Vance pauses the video here pic.twitter.com/zQOk0ffg5G

— Clue Heywood (@ClueHeywood) July 25, 2024

OK.

But just know I am better than you

That was sarcasm BTW

Yikes. JD is 16 points underwater in favorability in the midwest.

Honestly, the Vance couch stuff is hilarious.

You are right that it is wrong to make false accusations about someone, especially of a sexual nature.

But I personally don't pretend that I'm a good person.

This guy is good.

Walz: "They scream 'socialism' -- we just build roads, and we build schools, and we build prosperity into this." pic.twitter.com/22m9YW4LU8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 26, 2024

They're still a bit disconcerting though. And as has been said, it's not like they haven't had any wins.

Trump’s Project 2025 leader Kevin Roberts: “We are winning… In ways that the other side doesn't yet know… We’re not gonna tell you everything that's coming… [Get] ready to fight” pic.twitter.com/czUczGMM3M

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) July 25, 2024

Yeah, he's really good. Democrats have a stable of savvy Governors that were being blocked out by the old guard. I think people will be surprised if they get more publicity.

I’m telling you: these guys are weird. pic.twitter.com/fvNRNf7T7T

— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) July 24, 2024

lol I think she has a shot

New MICHIGAN Detroit News/WDIV poll

�� Kamala Harris 42%
�� Donald Trump 41%
�� RFK Jr. 10%

Previous Biden vs Trump poll: TRUMP +8 in January

— umichvoter ��️‍������ (@umichvoter) July 26, 2024

The Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people, under the supervision of the reverse vampires are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner.

BREAKING: In a stunning leak, JD Vance is found to be calling for a federal response to stop women from traveling from red states to blue states to receive reproductive healthcare. Retweet so all Americans hear this devastating leak. pic.twitter.com/t9Q4n9dQJL

— Kamala’s Wins (@harris_wins) July 26, 2024

Right now, it's probably fairly close to a coin flip, which is remarkable considering where this thing stood after that disastrous Biden debate performance.

These state polls are what to keep an eye on, especially Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The national polls aren't meaningless, but keep in mind that she needs to be up by about 4 points or more in the popular vote to translate into an electoral college lead.

Not if Trump wins.

Going to quote this for importance. I've seen a lot about how engagement for Democrats is up among minorities and young people, and that's great. But this isn't about running up the vote in New York, California, and Illinois. She needs to win some group of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Arizona.

Since 1992, the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in every GE except 2004. It's not about how many votes you get, it's where you get those votes.

Predict it has it at 56/47 Trump right now, which feels about right.

Pretty much a coin flip with a slight Trump edge.

We don't know how many quiet old white Biden voters there are in the Midwest who aren't going to blindly jump on the Harris bandwagon.

The Obamas have officially endorsed Kamala.

Positive news in Michigan:

Harris, Trump tied in Michigan survey

I can't recall where I read it, but someone posted that Trump was +8 in the last poll. Not sure if that's accurate or not, though.

It's not particularly meaningful unless it's the last poll by the same pollster.

That might be the final nail in Marianne Williamson's coffin.

Of course, but this race went from a Trump cakewalk to a coin flip in about a week. If Trump holds off on the debate till after the convention, Dems are stuck with Biden.

I think a lot of the statistical folks who pour over data have said that's no longer the case. That there is actually a decent chance that Trump wins the popular vote but loses the electoral college.

Maybe that changes with Kamala but Biden's strategy was to alienate the base to hopefully snag enough white men in the Rust Belt to win. His support in solid blue states was down from your typical Democratic candidate.

There was also a Georgia poll that had Trump up 1 only, but it showed Kamala with over 30% of the white vote. If a Democrat gets over 30% in Georgia, I've seen all the stat folks say she'll win the state barring a huge dropoff in black voters.

I saw something once that if a Dem could ever get 25% of the White vote in Mississippi, they would win. Crazy stat.

The voting demographics have shifted somewhat substantially over the past 4 years. Baby Boomers are passing away and the GOP has done nothing to appeal to young voters replacing them that aren't fueled by racism.

It's anyone's guess until we see the results but I don't think the GOP has the same advantages they previously had. Polling right now is also more likely to overstate GOP support rather than Dems because some assumptions are being made by pollsters trying to figure out Trump's support and making some guesses at what the electoral demographics will look like.

What should worry Trump, now that Biden isn't on the ticket, is nearly every state poll in the primaries overshot his support prior to the primary.

That's how I feel as well. I've been pretty vocal about how I don't trust the newly 'adjusted' polling methods for the Presidential race, but I DO trust the movement of those polls. Like I don't trust the baseline they're starting from, but if that number shifts 10 points in one direction that significant movement is a legit indicator, regardless of the accuracy of the starting point.

I'd like to see this, because I doubt this very much. Given the way the electoral college is structured, I'm not sure it is possible for a GOP candidate to win the popular vote but lose the EC.

If they get rising support in big blue states. Theres definitely still a trump segment here in California.

"JD Vance searched for interspecies dolphin sex, and
then admitted it on Twitter"


https://www.rawstory.com/jd-vance-dolphin-search-history/

I was half-expecting to see a picture of Jim McElwain and a shark.

If Trump doesn't have an assassination attempt, the Dems are probably stuck with Biden. The bad polls are what hurt Biden and they didn't really get ugly until Mid July. In April, Trump had a 2-point lead. In early July, the aggregate was around +2.3, it wasn't until after July 13 that the damn broke to +3.5.

But the same demographic that would "rise" in CA (or IL, or NY, etc...) is also going to be present in swing states. Every time someone digs deep into this they say something like (this is a totally made up example) "young latino men will come out in force for Trump in CA even though it won't make a difference" but then young latino men will also come out in force in Arizona where it will.

I'd love to see a Trump-supporting demographic that a) we expect to expand in voting participation this election and b) is mainly confined to solid blue states.

I'll be interested in where everything is in September. I think June to early July was the best possible set of circumstances for Trump (Hunter trial, bad Biden debate, failed assassination) and late July has been the best set of circumstances for Harris (great fundraising, everyone falling in line, even Beyonce doing an ad for her!).

I don't think Trump was going to keep his lead from early July no matter what so I will be interested to see how the ads and machines work in August for both parties. I do think this will be a close election, there's just so much noise on both sides with this much time left.

I think one big advantage for Harris is she will only be campaigning for a little over three months before people vote. There hasn't been enough time for the right to chip away at her and do what they did to Hillary (massive 18 month onslaught). If the Dems can properly frame Harris quickly as a good alternative to the two old guys, I think she could win. They need to be aggressive though. The flip side is if they just rely on positive media coverage and let the Trump goons flood TVs with attack ads on her (a la Hillary), the opposite could happen. This is like a court trial where the republicans are trying to sew "reasonable doubt" in white voters on Harris and her team needs to be ready to fight this. And, yes, I know my analogy is reversed to real life where Trump is the felon and Harris is the prosecutor :D

That makes sense, Arles.

If you think about it, the GOP had been chipping away at Hillary since 1992.

lol...

I just want to personally thank @JDVance for knocking me out of the position of the worst Donald Trump hire. I didn’t think it would happen but here we are and I am grateful. ��

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) July 26, 2024

FBI report says what hit Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented.

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Hillary had like 20+ years of being a repulsive human being. She was wrong on almost every single issue. It wasn't some Trump attacks that did her in, it was that she was a bad candidate that people didn't like.

The difference in now and 2016 is that Trump is more unpopular than he was before. His mere presence riles up voters. And he can no longer run on the "outsider" platform that worked in 2016.

Maybe I'm overly optimistic on Harris' chance, but I feel like she has a lot in her favor. Republicans and Trump are inherently unpopular. Their ideas are weird and people don't like them (his candidates lost every swing state in 2022). Harris doesn't need to be a great candidate, just someone who can speak on how weird Trump, make abortion a central issue, and act like a normal human being.

From what I have seen, she has definitely energized people. My timeline is full of people who had said they would never vote for Biden that are now all in on Kamala.

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Biden was getting clobbered all the way back to 2023 if you look at the swing states. He shit on his base hard to defend Israel and it cost him dearly. The debate was the last straw as it solidified every negative point against him.

It's also coming out that his campaign didn't know what the fuck they were doing. They didn't run internal polling for 2 months. They had no ads running on social media. And his advisors kept telling him to talk up his foreign policy which was disastrous instead of focusing on abortion. Just a clusterfuck and I think we'll get some eye-opening books some day about his administration.

For sure. I still would have voted Biden 100% against Trump but I didnt really feel good about supporting his run for a second term.

Here's a pretty good breakdown of the advantage Republicans had shrinking. There are others who have talked about it (Silver, ettingermentum) too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/u...rump-2024.html

What it boils down to is Republicans are making gains with minorities. But minorities make up a higher percentage in states that are not competitive. For instance, the 5 states with the highest population of Hispanic voters are California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New York. So if Republicans pick up a couple points in those states, it doesn't change the result, but it's millions of votes difference.

In the same vain, Democrats have been making gains with white voters. It's why Biden was able to carry Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that have some of the highest percentage of white voters in the country. Gaining a couple percentage points helps in the electoral college, but not so much in the popular vote since those states are smaller.

This was a trend in 2022. Whether this changes with Kamala on the ticket is another story. But Biden's best path to winning was sneaking out wins in PA, WI, and MI which would have still not gotten him enough to win the popular vote considering how poorly he was doing even in deep blue states.

These are interesting numbers....
https://x.com/yashar/status/18170109...ifKfkl4vw&s=19

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I wonder if Trump's numbers are still be bolstered by people who didn't vote in 2022 or 2020.

dola

I mean Trump is the one saying stuff like this:

Not a single Black voter in Michigan poll says they'll back Trump - Raw Story

Shapiro helps in Pennsylvania but I think might hurt elsewhere. I'm sure they have run the numbers though to decide if he's worth the risk.

Andy Beshear is headlining a campaign rally in Atlanta this weekend. There are lots of big hitter politicians putting a full court press on to try to get the VP pick.

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That's fine, and I was aware of that, but I see no evidence that Trump can/will win the popular vote but not win the electoral college, which was your original claim/suggestion.

And this is important because regardless of the result people really need to understand how badly the EC disadvantages democratic POTUS candidates.

And people really need to understand the great compromise the smaller states agreed to in order for the Union to be formed. It will always be advantageous to the smaller states because without some ability to feel represented, they would have remained simply colonies to another power.

If you ever forced a vote based on sheer population we would no longer be a Republic and would force all states to re-evaluate their entry into this Union.

The popular vote and the EC have been at odds perhaps 5 times? 6 times? So far, that’s one a helluva great result for the original compromise.

In 1770, the population of the smallest state, Delaware, was 8% that of the largest state, Virginia. In 2020, the population of the smallest state, Wyoming, was 1.5% that of the largest state, California.

The EC devalues the votes of millions of Americans, as done the Senate. If you truly think there's value in preserving the sovereignity of small, rural, states, then let's compromise after a quarter of a millenium and get rid of one of them.

It and the Senate were also made to protect slavery. That was what they were concerned about.

And why should that matter anymore for the presidency? Especially now? Have we asked what some of the "smaller" states think? For that matter, define "smaller"? Why is Montana a "small" state? What compromise was their entry part of, in 1889?

Or looking at it from another angle, why should you have more say in matters if you decide to move away from everyone else??

I mean, I'm sure because home state is very important electors in Delaware right now are all "YO WHAT THE SHIT, CALIFORNIA! THANKS FOR THE FRIGGIN' SCREW JOB!!"