US Presidential Elections - 2024 edition

[Gorth]

Democracy, ain't it grand?

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

RFKJR gets on his knees and swallows more than his pride.

Watch the 2 min clip of his speech, it's perhaps the most pathetic thing to come out this election cycle and that is really saying something. I guess the worm ate the part of his brain that could remember there is a current military adventurism besides Ukraine Trump is not only behind but wants to escalate, even with Biden backing it to the ridiculous and shameful degree that he is. The **** about cleaning out corporate influence and protecting free speech is slightly less risible, but only slightly.

[uuuhhii]

that is a very abbreviated name

is this the anti vax candidate

not long before usa elect a flat earther

[Guard Dog]

I know you are all eagerly waiting for my endorsement of a candidate in the 2024 US Presidential race.  I have made my choice! Not Trump or Harris. Oh God no they are both just awful. I wanted to endorse someone who has served honorably in war. Someone who will supports for the free practice of all religious faiths. Someone who will fight for his people!

 

[rjshae]

I'm really hoping I get to roll out Jim Carrey's loser video again. Fun times.

 

[Raithe]

To pull something from the other year out...

 

[BruceVC]

The presidential debate  is tonight, Harris vs Trump

Its significant for the Dems considering the outcome of the disastrous last one with Biden

I also think this debate will matter to undecided voters. I will end up watching highlights because its going to be at 3am local time 

Edited September 10 by BruceVC

[Bartimaeus]

The debate is tonight. It seems unlikely this will go great for Kamala:

1. Trump voters are wholly committed at this point, so it doesn't matter if he looks and sounds worse than Biden did at the previous one, they will not care.
2. Kamala is currently sitting atop a very fragile big tent coalition, and even small missteps could discourage sizable sections of her voters.
3. So-called "independent" voters (i.e. the unengaged and low-information voters - who, in all likelihood, lack internal monologues to drive any kind of intelligent thinking process, which is supposedly somewhere between a third and half of all people - that walk among us) aren't likely to be watching this debate in the first place: at most, they'll maybe read garbage headlines by garbage media tomorrow morning, the vast majority of which will judge Kamala and Trump by completely disparate standards.
4. ...And that last bit of the previous sentence really should've been a point in of itself. I think the best case scenario, she gets a good line in like Biden did in 2020 a la "will you shut up, man?", which is one of the very few times I can remember someone going toe-to-toe with Trump and coming out the better for it. It's not often someone gets one over him with a line like that.
5. I saw someone recently compare Trump to Vladimir Harkonnen of the Dune series, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head ever since.

...Point #5 didn't really have anything to do with the debate, but I feel it was still worth mentioning.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

54 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

The debate is tonight. It seems unlikely this will go great for Kamala:

1. Trump voters are wholly committed at this point, so it doesn't matter if he looks and sounds worse than Biden did at the previous one, they will not care.
2. Kamala is currently sitting atop a very fragile big tent coalition, and even small missteps could discourage sizable sections of her voters.
3. So-called "independent" voters (i.e. the unengaged and low-information voters - who, in all likelihood, lack internal monologues to drive any kind of intelligent thinking process, which is supposedly somewhere between a third and half of all people - that walk among us) aren't likely to be watching this debate in the first place: at most, they'll maybe read garbage headlines by garbage media tomorrow morning, the vast majority of which will judge Kamala and Trump by completely disparate standards.
4. ...And that last bit of the previous sentence really should've been a point in of itself. I think the best case scenario, she gets a good line in like Biden did in 2020 a la "will you shut up, man?", which is one of the very few times I can remember someone going toe-to-toe with Trump and coming out the better for it. It's not often someone gets one over him with a line like that.
5. I saw someone recently compare Trump to Vladimir Harkonnen of the Dune series, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head ever since.

...Point #5 didn't really have anything to do with the debate, but I feel it was still worth mentioning.

1. Trump could publicly play video of himself sexually abusing children with Epstein and it would not impact the 40-something % that buys into the cult.

2. Not only that, but I really think that she's blowing what boost she got from Biden by not being hard on Israel generally and Netanyahu specifically. An American citizen was recently shot by an IDF sniper and so far it's been crickets from all of the dems, which is certainly not helping with the perceptions that dems do not have much compassion for Muslims. The dems NEED the Muslim vote to win and they're absolutely failing to really do some pretty easy things that show they give two ****s about Muslims. Right now it would not surprise me if Trump wins because Kamala lost by the hair that is Muslim voters.

3. I'm probably not going to watch it lmao. Look, if you've seen one Trump debate you've seen them all. He's going to spew tons of horse**** which is going to be sanitized by the media to not make him look completely unhinged. I do not think Kamala is going to say anything noteworthy, if she does I'll be pleasantly surprised browsing tonight or tomorrow.

4. I think that Kamala really needs to hit him on abortion and labor, where he is extremely vulnerable. To boot, the dems need to come out against the car dealerships, that's THE Republican base and they're almost universally reviled by anyone who has to interact with them. It's time to go after the Republican base in the same way Republicans go after unions.

5.

 

[Bartimaeus]

They're eating the dogs and cats.

[Malcador]

[Bartimaeus]

Trump: "I have concepts of a plan"

Okay, I take it back, maybe Kamala will be fine, she's handled some of the tougher questions just about as well as she could and avoided going completely off the rails like he has multiple times.

Edited September 11 by Bartimaeus
concept -> concepts

[Bartimaeus]

Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris

Quote

Swift, 34, signed her post "Childless Cat Lady" — a reference to language used by Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, to describe women who do not have kids.

 

[Agiel]

Just now, Bartimaeus said:

Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris

 

I guess that about seals this election.

[Malcador]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

They're eating the dogs and cats.

Just surreal seeing something like this in a US Presidential debate, even after the third time around

[Bartimaeus]

20 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Just surreal seeing something like this in a US Presidential debate, even after the third time around

I got involved with the Taliban.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

13 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I got involved with the Taliban.

Transgender surgeries on illegal aliens in prison.

[BruceVC]

I think overall Harris had a much better debate than  Trump

Trump did well in the first 20 minutes and then he got triggered by her and couldnt stay on point about what he should have been focusing on

You can see she is an intelligent and formidable debater who had done her homework and preparation around how to debate Trump and what to focus on

Much better outcome for the Dems than  the last one 

 

 

 

[Malcador]

9 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I got involved with the Taliban.

I still wonder who Trump thinks Abdul was.

As always, it is fun to read a transcript of Trump

Obamacare was lousy health care. Always was. It's not very good today. And what I said, that if we come up with something, we are working on things, we're going to do it and we're going to replace it. But remember this. I inherited Obamacare because Democrats wouldn't change it. They wouldn't vote for it. They were unanimous. They wouldn't vote to change it. If they would have done that, we would have had a much better plan than Obamacare. But the Democrats came up, they wouldn't vote for it. I had a choice to make when I was president, do I save it and make it as good as it can be? Never going to be great. Or do I let it rot? And I felt I had an obligation, even though politically it would have been good to just let it rot and let it go away. I decided -- and I told my people, the top people, and they're very good people -- I have a lot of good people in this -- that administration. We read about the bad ones. We had some real bad ones too. And so do they. They have really bad ones. The difference is they don't get rid of them.

But let me just explain.

I had a choice to make do I save it and make it as good as it can be or let it rot? And I saved it. I did the right thing. But it's still never going to be great. And it's too expensive for people. And what we will do is we're looking at different plans. If we can come up with a plan that's going to cost our people, our population less money and be better health care than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it. But until then I'd run it as good as it can be run

Edited September 11 by Malcador

[Hurlshort]

I didn't watch, because I'm busy living life, but I'm pleasantly surprised that Kamala did as well as she did. She had a pretty rough debate 4 years ago with Pence, so clearly it is something her team has worked on. Hopefully that will be enough for some folks sitting on the fence. It probably doesn't really move the needle, but it helps with the momentum of the campaign. 

[ShadySands]

So independent voters I get, I'm technically independent though I haven't voted for a Republican since Trump hit the scene. That said, undecided voters, I do not get. Trump has been a known quantity since forever and he hasn't changed and is probably not capable of it. 

I don't care much for Harris, in fact, l do not like her at all, but it's not even a choice between the two.

....

Regarding Israel, didn't they kill their last leader that tried for a real peace? I finally get why my Jewish step-grandfather (is that a thing?) hated Israel. I won't mention the things he said because I don't want Mossad to assassinate me. It probably wouldn't even make the front page of the news if they took my whole flight down to get me. Not that I'm hard to kill, you could probably lure me into an unmarked van with a Slim Jim and Dr pepper.

[Pidesco]

1 hour ago, ShadySands said:

So independent voters I get, I'm technically independent though I haven't voted for a Republican since Trump hit the scene. That said, undecided voters, I do not get. Trump has been a known quantity since forever and he hasn't changed and is probably not capable of it. 

A lot of people are just that ignorant of the world around them, and not in the conspiracy rabbit hole sense. They are ignorant of things just because they are for the most part entirely uninterested in things that are consequential.

[HoonDing]

Here's to the victory of the lesser evil

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Ok so after having missed most of the debate while it was going on, I have to say it went largely how I expected. Trump was totally incoherent while Kamala was a mayo sandwich. I don't think that this will really change anyone's mind and wish Kamala would have broken differently than she did, but she's clearly attempting to hold a big tent together. I do very much think that this is going to be a very close race and would not be surprised if Trump wins because the dems lost Muslims, which sounds ****ing insane after the Muslim Ban **** but you gotta admit the dems sure do know how to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

I think the biggest surprise was honestly Trump's appearance, he's clearly doing work to not seem as old and the result was uncanny in a very bad way. Between the obvious dye job and whatever drug ****tail they pumped into him before getting on stage it made him look and act  much weirder than he would as just an almost octogenarian, and not just because of the nonsense. We can and should laugh at the nonsense like "they're eating the dogs" or "transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison" but I found it very sad. If he wasn't a gigantic piece of **** I'd honestly feel very sad for Trump, his children and other clingers are letting him embarass himself because they know without him they're completely irrelevant.

7 hours ago, ShadySands said:

That said, undecided voters, I do not get.

I can see it in a few cases, like weighing whether they can pull the lever for Kamala despite being disgusted with the dems or are still hoping for the Human Instrumentality Project to happen. But I don't see how someone could be on the fence about Trump, it's been a decade and everyone knows who he is by now, everyone I know either LOVES or HATES him, there is no in-between.

7 hours ago, ShadySands said:

Regarding Israel, didn't they kill their last leader that tried for a real peace? I finally get why my Jewish step-grandfather (is that a thing?) hated Israel. I won't mention the things he said because I don't want Mossad to assassinate me. It probably wouldn't even make the front page of the news if they took my whole flight down to get me. Not that I'm hard to kill, you could probably lure me into an unmarked van with a Slim Jim and Dr pepper.

Dr Pepper? I didn't know you were from Texas.

Anyways, I think that Israel really doesn't want peace and that it would be political suicide for any political figure there to campaign on it. Israel is getting very nationalistic because those settlements are pretty much the perfect incubator to turn people into fascists and settlements are growing rapidly because they're much cheaper than paying rent in Tel Aviv. They may be forced into peace, not because of Donald Trump scaring Hamas or Kamala's weird auntie laugh, but because the IDF is getting worn out at doing actual fighting and Israel's military may not be able to stand even with tons of US support. 

[rjshae]

10 hours ago, Pidesco said:

A lot of people are just that ignorant of the world around them, and not in the conspiracy rabbit hole sense. They are ignorant of things just because they are for the most part entirely uninterested in things that are consequential.

It may be consequential, but politics is often stupid and ridiculous. Many people find real life much more interesting, and only pay attention when the election rolls around.