The 2024 Presidential Nomination Thread
 

....and ice cream social.

The Biden thread mentioned that Chris Christie will join the field next week, and another report says Former VP Pence will as well. That would give us:
Trump
Ron Desantis
Nikki Haley
Mike Pence
Asa Hutchinson
Tim Scott
Chris Christie
Vivek Ramaswamy (who)
Ryan Binkley (who?)
Larry Elder (who?)
Perry Johnson (who)
Doug Burgum (who?)
Francis Suarez (who?)
Will Hurd

More may join, but who could possibly win besides the obvious one?

Carrying over a question I asked in the Biden thread:

I just want to see one candidate on the debate stage say "Raise your hand if you've never been found liable for sexual assault!"

Doug Burgum (who?) should be announcing his candidacy in the next week or so

Added.

That really should be a basic dis-qualifier, shouldn't it?

In normal times it would be. And I know it wasn't a criminal trial.

But I would think any candidate that wants to beat Trump would have to use the civil trial as a cudgel. They should also replay all the times that Trump said that someone was "unfair" to him and then brand him as a snowflake.

The more that join the stage, the less likely anyone can derail Trump.

The debates are meaningless. Every once in a while someone gets off a good line and genuinely hurts another candidate. Christie did it to Rubio seven years ago. But generally, they yap to a draw and people pretend that the person they liked all along had a great showing. We call that spin.

Debates are to meaningful discourse as side-bets on the coin toss are to the Super Bowl.

Trump wins when people get into the mud with him. He's captured that personality trait. I don't know how he does it. The more he talks, the less serious I think he is as a human being. But that plays well in what passes for debate. He takes others out of their game. He got Rubio jabbering about penis size, of all things. On national television. Rubio would have won easily if not for the Christie line and the subsequent penis debate.

I'm not 100% sure Rubio would have governed much differently from Trump, but at least he wouldn't have been such a giant (penis metaphor) about it.

Unfortunately, handicapping the crowd changes to benefit the name you know every time a new name is added. Of the "whos", Ramaswamy is making a name being the outsider who says out loud what the outsiders are thinking. And thus he will top out at 3-4%. He'll appeal to the small number of people who genuinely like Trump, but think Trump can't win. As opposed to splitting the vote ten ways between those who genuinely dislike Trump and think he can't win. That second group might actually be huuuge within the party, but divided ten ways has no say whatsoever.

With all these candidates, Trump only needs 20-25% of the party (not the whole voting population) to stick with him fervently long enough that no one in that second group manages to unite that second group.

But if I have to handicap it, DeSantis is the name because of the landslide in Florida, but when he speaks, people fall DeSleep. Plus taking on Disney might be all fun and games, but it's not a serious platform. He's wasting whatever he could legitimately offer by wrestling the mouse.

Haley would have been the name, but her time has apparently passed, and, like McCain, she has become bitter. Scott is interesting enough, but relatively generic as senators go. Pence will never overcome having been on the ticket with Trump, and then the avid Trumpers hate him because he refused to break the law after the election. I don't know why he'd run, given that it helps Trump. Christie is also interesting in other ways, but his association with Trump plus being out of the game for so long makes his candidacy a non-starter.

Anyway, it looks like a slam-dunk for Trump unless something major changes. The wild card is that convincing fake audio/video is now a thing, and it will be used effectively last-minute in ways we can't yet anticipate. But that's more important for generals than primaries.

Let's play another game. How could Haley had stayed out of the MAGA-sphere and still stayed relevant? She was actually a really attractive candidate until she started defending the most outrageous of the Trump stuff. If she could have stayed a Trump denier, could she have stayed relevant this long to be a true contender?


Edit: I don't know why I want to play "What if?" today.

No because MAGA would have turned on her for speaking out against Trump. They only accepted her because she drank the Kool-aid and started working for him. If she goes back to that now, can't see them accepting her now.

It doesn't matter, though. Trump doesn't stick to her the way he does to Christie or Pence. She accepted a high position and she praised him, but she didn't get out there on his team and she didn't concede to him the way others did.

All that matters is whether she can unite people who don't particularly like Trump.

My wife asked me about a year ago if I could think of any candidates on the other team (she's a Democrat, I'm neither - never voted for anyone in either party for president) I would ever consider voting for. I mentioned Haley. I was impressed with how she handled herself in South Carolina and some of the things she said with the UN.

But the Haley this year is a different person. She's angry, less thoughtful. Not someone who seems to want to unite or inspire people. I'm left unable to answer my wife's question right now, which means I'll never be able to answer it in the positive.

I don't know what wins primaries, only that large numbers favor those who already have a name. Remember that it's a primary, and the MAGA designation is just a slogan for one candidate within the party. For someone to win and have a chance in the general, she has to walk that tightrope between differentiating herself enough to inspire people to vote and not alienating people she will have to count on in November.

Anyone who sits back and waits for the debates to make a mark is not going anywhere. Now's the time to get out to Iowa and New Hampshire and inspire people, get practice speaking, create a message.

One thing I learned when I lived in New Hampshire was to watch the news coming out of July 4th celebrations. The July 4th speeches, wherever the candidates are speaking, two years and one year before the general, tell you who's ready for the big stage. Didn't hear much last year, but COVID was still an issue.

There are several of these people who, if you transported them back 10 years ago, would have qualified as "normal" GOP candidates along the lines of Romney/Dole/McCain. Pence, obviously, but he's cooked. Aside from Haley, Tim Scott is one who could have done that, I think. I haven't heard much out of him, but I'm just assuming every GOP candidate right now has to be anti-woke/culture war and "Dems are evil" to have any kind of chance in this political climate.

Hutchinson seems like a guy trying to run as a fence sitter between being a southern GOP governor and the Cheney/Sununu/Hogan types who have pushed back against Trump. For instance, he just came out and said no J6 pardons, and I'm pretty sure he was way more on board with pushing Covid vaccines than other GOPers.

And this isn't going to play well in a general election. The GOP has created such narrow window for them to win a general election that they absolutely need the Electoral College advantage that they have plus an uninspiring candidate like Biden to have a chance.

It is a high-risk strategy, but I think you go HARD at Trump as a huge loser. You frame it as all these hard working people just want their kids to be able to go to school and not have transgender story hour shoved in their face. But they won't be able to do that because you are going to lose to 900 year old Biden and let him replace Alito and Thomas.

And all these hard working people gave you their time and their money and their votes, and you responded by making the Senate run off all about you, you, you, so now Chuck Schumer is the thank you these people got

With every sentence, I'd constantly frame it as Trump's base vs. Trump. Give them permission to turn on him.

You all worked so hard for him, and he sold you out.
You all just want your kids to be safe, and he sold you out.
You all just want to beat Biden, and he won't step aside and let you.

It will probably fail, but if you take down the King, then you get the crown

It's a catch-22 - if a Hutchinson or Christie play the moderate, back to normal candidate game, they won't get through the primary. Christie has a ton of baggage so I don't know what he'd bring to the table in a general election, but a Haley, Scott, or Hutchinson who ran on the old school GOP policies would fare way better in a general election.

The gamble here is that if you tie Trump to all of the losers he supported, a fair number of those people ALSO supported the Herschel Walkers, Kari Lakes, etc.

And the even bigger issue is that where his base has turned on him, it's to go even further extreme than him - like Covid vaccines. He got booed for bringing it up. They created a monster that is only appeased by more extreme policies and candidates.

I still can't answer this question, but if this is the first thing you read about a candidate you've never heard of...

Two top aides to Vivek Ramaswamy were fired by the campaign after it was revealed they were also foreign agents on behalf of LIV golfhttps://t.co/pgF437XKMB

— Sam Stein (@samstein) May 31, 2023

He also wants people under 25 to pass a citizenship test in order to be eligible to vote.

Youngkin is sending VA guardsmen down to the border, so he's probably in.

Vivek and Scott are not in it to win the Presidency. They are angling to be Trump's VP. They won't attack him much. Scott feels like the most logical choice since he gives that phony evangelical vibe that Pence had. But him being in the closet is kind of a risk too.

Christie is interesting. I wonder if he's in it just to stir up shit and attack Trump. He'd be ruthless at a debate but I see no scenario where Trump even bothers with debates in the primary since he's up so much in the polls.

Youngkin is still a possibility, and so is Brian Kemp.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

Good ol' Haley, the one candidate that might have gotten me to vote for HRC.

Damn! We missed our chance :)

I have even odds Jon would have spontaneously combusted if he voted for Hillary.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

If THAT miserable sack of shit is in play then there really is no hope for the country*. The only thing good I can say for that bastard is that he's actually more likable than his wife, who is the single most unbearably obnoxious person I've encountered in decades if not ever.



(who am I kidding, I don't actually believe there's any realistic hope anyway)

SE Cupp seems to think Chris Christie is purposely going kamikaze to try to bring down Trump. He knows he won't win, he is just trying to make Trump lose.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

That doesn't sound like a rational take on her part. Christie might end up working in that manner, but he also has to have some sort of message, some sort of genuine definition of what he's selling - even if it's solely a narcissistic view.

Trump would be wise to avoid debates, but he can't resist a television audience any more than he could resist undignified twitter posting. I guess he's continued that on his own social network, but does anyone see those posts other than the media and his true fans?

Too many of these candidates don't inspire anything. It's like they're running for president of their bedroom mirrors.

I have to admit, though, I am curious about what would have made Jon vote for Hillary over Haley at the time. I don't think the two candidates have much in common other than XX in the 23rd pair.

Trump will for sure run as 3rd party if he loses the primary right? 2024 might be the election for some sort of 4th unify the country party...

Biden vs DeSantis vs Trump 3rd party vs some sort of Wes Moore/Pence unification ticket.

Who am I kidding it will be Biden/Trump part 2...

Yeah, it seems like a foregone conclusion that we get Trump v. Biden 2: The Oldening.

There are serous discussions to be had about the future of the GOP post-Trump, the balance between individual liberty and concerned parents, the proper balance of revenue generation vs. spending cuts to handle the debt, the United States' place in a world with increasing authoritarian influences . . .

and none of that might matter for DeSantis because he looks weird in still pictures when he laughs.

Politics is so stupid sometimes.

I doubt Trump runs 3rd party, that's just too much work. He would, though, spend all his time trying to sabotage the GOP nominee so he could claim that if he was the nominee he would have won.

He'll be "Truth Socialing" like never before

Trial balloons being floated now for Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan to run as a Democrat, trying to find a less political angle to appeal to the not-into-old-Joe plurality of party voters. Fascinating if it actually comes together, he could be more formidable than Bloomburg, I think.

Trump needs a large field in the GOP primary race. His die-hard fanatics account for almost half of the republican base, but only about 35% of the national electorate. With a large field, he can eliminate the other challengers by attrition over time. Of course, in the general election, he doesn't really have much of a chance with independents (who he needs to win), as they would vote for a mannequin over Trump.

So for the democrats, Trump is the gift that keeps giving, and it's in their best interest to have Trump as the republican nominee again.

He might pull some moderate right moderates, but man would he turn off anyone left of center on. Youth vote would despise him.

I'm aware that ot-of-nowhere candidates are almost always DOA. I'm not naive.

And the say-so of another corporate raider type isn't swaying anyone, I get that.

But here's Bill Ackman's summary of the case, and... I think there's something to it. By that I mean like a 10% chance of this snowballing into being "a thing," not a 75% chance.

Jamie Dimon is one of the world's most respected business leaders. Politically he is a centrist. He is pro-business and pro-free enterprise, but also supportive of well-designed social programs and rational tax policies that can help the less fortunate. He is extremely smart,…

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) May 31, 2023

Full text:

All that may be true, but I'm not sure "super-rich bank executive" plays well with the kids these days?

It reads as if Ackman doesn't understand that the black vote is the key to the Dem primary. How does Dimon take that away from Biden?

In a normal world, he'd run as a Republican, right?

The only reason for anyone to run and think they have a shot at the nomination is on the chance that Trump or Biden are forced to drop out whether due to health or legal issues. Not the worst bet to make but the candidates are not playing to beat either of them.

I have read that Dimon is a registered D and has voted absentee in most recent elections.

And I do get how the deck would be stacked against him.

The last part, absolutely. One of the big stories of 2024 will be the numbers of Democrats who will step in if polling indicates Trump is in any danger of losing the nomination.

That won't be necessary with a large field. One thing that struck me in 2016 was the inability of any of the establishment candidates to define themselves.

At the start of the cycle, Trump was a side-show. He had no chance. He ended an early debate by accusing Megyn Kelly of having "blood coming from her eyes," which the media took as some sort of menstruation analogy, but I seriously doubt Trump is capable of or interested in that type of subtlety.

What he was after was getting his candidacy talked about. Over time, he became the story. Not how he'd govern, but his personality.

On the other end were the usual suspects. Every campaign has them. Senators and sometimes governors of large states who have made the right connections and risen through the ranks. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio on one side, Ted Cruz playing the role of the leader of the conservative right - which does have its dedicated following, but a ceiling within the party that prevents nomination.

What Trump did was create his own following. I don't know what avid Trumpers have in common other than an attraction to his personality. They'll "build a wall," but that means different things to different people. Certainly a physical wall, which Trump often talked about, is meaningless without an immigration strategy behind it - rules, infrastructure, definitions, enforcement. All very important but never articulated. We can't have a country like the US without immigration - everyone knows this, I think. Trump even knows this. Rhetoric is not a policy and policy doesn't interest Trump.

There was a moment I've referred to earlier here - when Christie took down Rubio in a debate. It was a strange moment. Rubio was doing the classic pivot line thing where you take a question, restate it, then gracefully segue into a planned piece where you end with a tested, trusted line. That's how "debate" works in the modern era. You win by never answering the question that's asked. Christie pointed out the segue. Rubio responded by repeating it. Christie pointed that out. And Rubio, earnestly and confidently, because he knew, absolutely knew, that it was a good segue and a tested line, repeated it a second time. Christie leaned in and that was that. The moment.

And there's Jeb on the side, royalty in having two presidents in the immediate family, governor of an important state, a genuinely nice guy - many considered him the one who actually would govern with heart, despite complete deference to the Republican establishment.

Jeb's there rolling his eyes. He saw it happening. He knew Trump was going to win and what that meant and he did not have the energy or the ammunition to fight it. Trump, of course, picked up on that immediately. We think of Trump as clueless. He isn't. He just has no interest (or ability, really) in the actual governing thing.

Rooting for the establishment over Trump in 2024 would be like rooting for the Storm Troopers in Star Wars (the original one). They arrive in masses, they shoot their weapons. Badly, without aim, but they usually win because few people possess the magic to unerringly avoid poorly-aimed trooper guns. Mitt Romney and the doddering version of John McCain were Storm Troopers.

I don't think the Republican party can be fixed right now. What they need is a Reagan, someone who understands personality and can connect it to policy. They have policy people in the race (Haley and others), they have establishment people - the next generation of Rubio/Bush (Pence, Scott, DeSantis to a certain extent). Someone will play the role of Ted Cruz, not sure where that will come from since people seem to have assumed Cruz would run again and it's starting to look like he won't. But I don't see the personality, other than Trump and Ramaswamy, who would be an improvement over Trump because he isn't Trump, but probably not much functional difference.

So we'll get Trump, and I think we'll get Biden again - Kennedy's vaccination thing will come up if he starts to gain traction and Biden will not debate him. Only even older and I'm sure various health issues affect both of them at this point. It's really a depressing thought, thinking of Biden/Trump 2. No boogaloo, not even a bit of electricity.

But it doesn't matter how many die-hard fanatics Trump has. I think it's a small number, but for someone to take the nomination from him, he or she needs to create his or her own die-hard fanatics. And that will attract people who need to be die-hard about something.

He's going to slaughter everyone in the primary.

Trump: "I don't like the term 'woke," because I hear the term 'woke woke woke' -- it's just a term they use, half the people can't define it, they don't know what it is." pic.twitter.com/uhZLRADXHa

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 1, 2023

I actually agree with Trump here. At least the blurb, I didn't watch the video. I'm not sure "woke" has a set definition. What it means to you may be different than what it means to me. Therefore it makes it kind of hard to use it in a conversation. So I've been trying to avoid using it.

I think we all agree with Trump on that point, that's the genius of it....he practically created the term, then when everyone else has been forced to hop on his square-wheeled wagon he's like "that's dumb. Lookit those dumbasses".

He ramped up most of the culture war stuff and now that people have taken it to extremes, he's going to jump in and act like the "reasonable" one. Tiny Ron DeSantis wants to inspect your kids genitals before they start school after all. I'm just looking to bring prices down for your family.

Say what you want about the guy, but it's pretty fucking brilliant.

I'd go so far to say his entire primary campaign in 2016 was a side-show, beginning with his ad hominem attacks on Jeb Bush and family. When Ted Cruz became a legitimate threat, Trump started with the "Lyin' Ted" nickname and accused Cruz's father of being involved with the JFK assassination. Cruz called Trump "a pathological liar" in this press conference. Of course, after the campaign, Ted buried his head up Trump's ass, just like almost all of the other republicans.

Trump also called Cruz's wife ugly in a roundabout way.

Hmmmm...

Is this the head of the same JPMorgan that has paid around $50 billion in fines over the last 20 years and has manipulated precious metals markets? I guess you looking for a position as Secretary of the treasury?

— maneco64 (@maneco1964) May 31, 2023

Just amazing that no one is willing to hit Trump on his biggest vulnerability. He's a losing loser that spreads his losing to the whole party.

all it means is that everything Dems/liberals like and stand for is going to destroy our country and must be stopped. They are just lumping them all under one banner now.

This is exactly what he will do. He knows he will NEVER lose his base, the mental gymnastics they will go through to convince themselves he said something but meant something else is astonishing.

So what we will see is him take the opposite stance of the over the top nonsensical things the GOP have trotted out in their endless culture war to appease moderates and independents.

It just may work.

So I just texted with my brother in law. He is super high up with JPM. Reports directly to Jamie Dimon. Bloomberg monthly did an article about him. Google his name and tons of shit comes up. He knows Dimon like almost no one else.

My BIL absolutely thinks he should run.

My BILs exact words

One of the biggest electoral losers in history. Never won the popular vote, lost the house, lost the senate, one of the worst, if not the worst, records for an administration in front of the SC and other federal courts. How many bankruptcies?

This is the guy the GOP attached their wagon to and continue to let him try to carry them to more losses.

He looks a lot like a Romney Republican. I just don't see a old white banker with a bad history with POC can come close to challenging Biden.

A good Biden challenger has to some how appeal to the moderate wing without losing the black or youth vote. Jon Stewart was a good example, though not one likely to want to run.

So my BIL just wrote me, he asked Dimon who said he would love the job but doesn't want to go through the campaign.

They'll counter that he won every election and it was just rigged. Other candidates can't bring it up because they'll lose that demographic that is into QAnon and election conspiracies.

The Dimon stuff makes no sense. Bloomberg tried to do the centrist schtick and put a ton of money behind it and got nowhere. I don't see how someone who is even more tied into the financial world and was part of the great recession would fare better.

When asked to name something about Trump that I liked--really liked, not just a backhanded fake complement--I would say Operation Warp Speed and the First Step Act. Those were really good things that the Trump White House led on and did.

So, of course, DeSantis is picking both of those as areas for attack.

Trump is a great winner is no way to run a campaign.

Yes, but as I recall the MAGAts were angry that their leader didn't get more credit for expediting the vaccine that most of them refused to take, for a virus they said was a hoax.

Running anti-vax may help in the primary, although I'm skeptical, but it definitely will hurt in the general. Even just anti-covid vax is going to be an anchor.

Well, they were skeptical of it because it came out so quickly because it was fast tracked and half the work had already been done when researching a potential common cold vaccine.

I did like it when Trump stood up on the primary debate stage and told the audience that George W Bush didn't keep us safe on 9/11. Cuz you know, thousands of people died.

I'd pay for PPV to have seen this.


A legit 3rd party with any hope of succeeding would need to start now, in order to have a 50-state ground game, including getting on the ballots in states. Given those deadlines, dropping out of, or losing, a primary is too late to get on enough ballots, even with infinite resources.

So, I agree. If he loses the primary, he might run "3rd party" out of spite, and it's likely his true believers (or grifters) might get him on the ballot in a few states, and if any of those states are swingy enough, it would be plenty to give the election to Biden.


If I had been on the board yesterday when this came up this would have been my guess. He's already in charge of JPM. POTUS is probably a lateral move with a lot of downside.

Yeah, except....

Definitely playing footsie with running.

Taking our country back from Joe Biden does not start with congratulating North Korea’s murderous dictator. pic.twitter.com/XDJP6B2qFO

— Brian Kemp (@BrianKempGA) June 3, 2023

What a miserable sack of shit, to call out a former President's love affair with a murdering bastard.

Jack Dorsey just endorsed RDK, Jr. if anyone needed more proof that dude is crazy.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

This is so incredibly dishonest, teenage girls aren’t killing themselves because of girls sports. These people don’t care about teenage girls, except if they can use them to beat up trans kids. https://t.co/2w0SpHBo8i

— Molly Jong-fast (@MollyJongFast) June 5, 2023

More the merrier at this stage. But he should fire his advisors.

I don't see how Pence stands a chance. He is/was too close to Trump. His performance during the election was good but not enough to redeem him for the other 3.5 years of "guilt by association".

He'll be asked some critical & tricky questions about his 4 years with Trump. And I'm sure Trump will have extra special things to say about him. Why put yourself through that now? I'd tell him to find something else to do (and make money).

The last thing the GOP needs is more candidates. I suspect they all think trumps legal woes will catch up to him and they will be the one who gets the scraps. That’s fine but if it looks like he’s going to get the nomination they need to all coalesce around one candidate. If we repeat 2016 he coasts to the nomination and they have to know he has little chance of winning the general.

There's no easier way to make money than raising money from right-wing millionaires.

I do think there is money to be made both in the campaign and the speaker circuit after. A couple are also just trying to get on the ticket with Trump.

I still say Pence's best chance to become President if he had from Jan 6 on had turned into the best witness to Trump's crimes, and not fought against subpoena's/Jan 6 commission. Get the Christian nationalism part of MAGA to his side, and make Trump look like he was the Anti-Christ. Christians love to forgive sins after all.



Instead we got a book and no real condemnation of Trump other than Jan 6. Still going after the "woke" parts of America-now he has no chance.

I don't see how that would get any part of MAGA to his side. It would have ensured that they would hate him forever. I think it's a terrible idea for him to be run, but from a purely personal political point of view, signing on to Trump was an in for a penny, in for a pound sort of deal. There's no going back after a certain point.

I know you're being partly sarcastic, but I'm all for forgiveness. I aspire to be like the Amish group some years back that openly forgave the culprit shortly after a brutal murder happened to someone in their community by an outsider. But there's a difference between forgiveness and voting for someone to be President.

Trump has done this all on his own and they still love him like a savior. Like he's the second coming, you might even say.

Pence is what he always was: an empty suit.

And I'm pretty sure most all the Trump supporters already hold him in such low regard that he had no chance to attract them. Hell, Trump is no better than my #2 choice and there's no chance I'd have wasted the energy to vote for someone as incapable and useless as Pence.

One important question is what percentage of the new Republican base is devoted to Trump in that manner.

We're all familiar by now with the Twitterizing of the media. Most stories now are about reactions. Reporters sit in their bedrooms and trawl the twitterverse for the most extreme commentary, then those reactions become the story.

The intent is to manufacture clicks out of nothing. No investment in reporting. The result is an industry that makes its money from the division of America. I think Alinksy's rules apply quite well to the media these days.

So when we see a story about the "other" side, whichever side, it's usually an example of Twitterizing. By no means representative of the majority of the people. The vast majority of Democrats do not dress up in drag and molest children. The vast majority of Republicans do not wish to return to a time when women and black people had no rights.

It's my hope that we have some items here that don't devolve into that, but I get accused of "bothsiderism" when I say that, so I try not to say that too much.

Primaries are designed by parties to protect those in power. Unfortunately for the Republicans, the apple cart was turned over in 2016 because Trump figured out how to beat the system. He tapped into voter frustration with the system. We talk about outsiders and populism all the time, but it almost never comes together like that. We get outsiders who remain at 2%. We get populists who simply repeat the party line. Perot is the only other person who even came close in my lifetime and he didn't have much interest in joining either party. He ended up being the guy who ended the Reagan run by splitting the Republicans more thoroughly than the Democrats. They never quite recovered.

Trump simply took a party (strangely enough, the party he didn't register with for much of his politically active life) and made it his own. He has no overriding political philosophy. He has governed... oddly. Sometimes he defers to the Republican core (his relatively new position on abortion rights being the most notable) and sometimes he doesn't. Maybe that appeals to a lot of people. His greatest political talent seems to be in understanding how to get voters interested in him - positively or negatively. He seems to benefit from both.

The numbers suggest one person would have a tough time beating him. One person divided ten ways... impossible. How people like Pence don't see this is a mystery. I guess in order to seek a major public office one must have a blind spot when it comes to not seeing the bigger picture. In order to beat Trump, someone has to inspire people, not slowly build a political machine that roams the Iowa countryside.

And talk about a Pence weakness, yikes. He's a perfect example of starving dogs, fresh meat, etc.

I was just coming to ask if these candidates have to return any leftover donations once their campaign fails.

Sununu is out. I was intrigued by his candidacy, but he certainly fails the "inspire lots of people" test.

This decision is perhaps the best indication of his qualification for the job he'll never have.

"The vast majority of Republicans do not wish to return to a time when women and black people had no rights."
Just talking with the Trump flag flyers that I deal with every day, I think Twitter might underrepresent how badly they want just that.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

There are a few options, including return the money (which no one does).

Most form a "Leadership PAC". They have almost no regulation and can just be used as a personal slush fund.

They can return it all because the new play is cry "RIGGED!" and fundraise off of that.

Here is the calculus of the RFK jr. run. If he isn't enough of a fly in the ointment, the "No Labels" party will also help the chaos.

1. @RobertKennedyJr is running for the Democratic nomination, but his biggest supporters are all Far Right Republicans like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. The reasons why helps explain the MAGA plan to win in '24 and beyond.https://t.co/VtYUvuUbcL

— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) June 6, 2023

Chris Christie is in again. Not sure why, except to annoy Trump.

Doug Burgum is also in. North Dakota governor. Tech business background. Intriguing, but the whoest of the "whos". This type never passes the inspire test. I doubt he even gets a nickname from Trump.

Personally, I'd love to see someone like this become inspiring. I just don't think it will happen any time soon. We revere our geriatric slogan muppets.

We see with Asa Hutchinson what the RNC pledge is going to do. All of these candidates are, in essence, swearing loyalty to Trump when he wins the nomination.

How does Christie deal with a pledge that promises he'll support Trump?

Mike Pence Launches Presidential Bid With Scathing Condemnation Of Donald Trump



“President Trump endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol on that day. But it is important for the American people to know that he also demanded that I choose between him and our Constitution. Now, voters will face the same choice,” Pence said. “I chose the Constitution, and I always will.”


Rats are jumping ship, for whatever that is worth.

That's a solid statement. Never expected it of him.

Wants to be DeSantis' AG. His job is to just attack Trump in a way that DeSantis can't. Kind of the same role he played for Trump in attacking Rubio.

But if the R's really, in their hearts, believed that, they would have removed his sugar daddy from office and let him take over.

https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1666...Znv52YZTh9J2dg

if Pence cannot say that Trump should be indicted if he committed a crime, then what is Pence doing running?

Even better, Pence said he would support the GOP nominee.

You can spot the moment that the 3 remaining brain cells in his head start kicking around. What a disastrous response.

He was legit caught off guard by the question. Who are his advisors? How do you not know that’s coming?

It was a great question. You spend a minute talking about restoring law and order and then later on talk about how law and order shouldn't matter if you're an elite.

Most candidates know how to deflect that stuff but Pence genuinely seems like a simpleton.

I don't think your campaign is going well if you rush out immediately to defend another candidate that was just indicted.

It's particularly ridiculous for Pence to do so, since he's not winning over any of the people he thinks he's courting by not outright going after Trump. You can't play both sides when one side hates your guts.