If due process of the law finds him guilty of insurrection I'm not sure how that amendment matters.

This man is going to get bummed to death by the danger-hair mobs while America implodes and it's going to be fucking awesome.

He did alright in Iowa.

>>98244
It's even worse, there isn't a clear alternative for the rest of the American right to rally around. Nikki Haley needed to win second bigly as a mainstream conservative vote but she lost to an evangelical winger who is establishing the Florida state guard as a paramilitary force. In Iowa.

He can’t possibly be president again, surely. And yet if he isn’t, it’s going to be four more years of Sleepy Joe, well into his 80s. Joe Biden has looked okay to me as a president, but his age is genuinely unacceptable and I worry that this will turn people back to Donald Trump, who is only slightly younger and considerably more mental.

Evilist Del Boy.

>>98246]
Two party system, same here giving two options:

Patates avec Crotte du Chienne
Riz au Merde du Canard

Sleepy Joe is fucked.

>>99251
I mean, he can’t be. I know he’s an actual corpse, but an actual corpse is still better than Donald Trump. My phone automatically offers me a cartoonish emoji when I type “corpse”. That must really distress undertakers, ambulance drivers, and murderers who talk about corpses regularly.

>He also fumbled on abortion rights, one of the most important issues for Democrats in this year's election. He was unable to explain Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. A conservative Supreme Court with three justices nominated by Trump overturned Roe two years ago. When asked if he supports some restrictions on abortion, Biden said he "supports Roe v. Wade, which had three trimesters. The first time is between a woman and a doctor. Second time is between a doctor and an extreme situation. A third time is between the doctor, I mean, between the women and the state."

>>99253

You're underestimating the level of dumb and uninformed that a lot of his voters are. Trump could tell them that Biden is a robot controlled by aliens, and a significant number of them would lap it up unquestioningly.

I've been to the States and I've met the kind of people that vote for Trump. The rural white trash same as the sparsely educated lower middle class and beyond. Really a lot of people who we would consider intellectually lacking in this country, but who pass for an average everyday person over there. It's a true intellectual horror show. And to think that those people get to make any kind of democratic decisions at all. Let alone ones that affect global politics.

>>99255
You do know this attitude is why a lot of people vote Trump? If you don't support the centre-right-masquerading-as-liberal Dems, you must be an uneducated retarded gap toothed backwards inbred yokel. It must be impossible for someone who is non-white, or educated, or middle class, to not agree with the Dems. And if you vote Reps, you ain't black.

Sneering white liberals hurting their own cause by othering and deriding people who disagree with them.

>>99256

People are thick everywhere, Americans are flamboyantly thick, but the real problem is a political system that gives voters a choice between two men with obvious dementia. People complain about Starmer being an underwhelming leader, but at least he knows what day it is.

>>99256

>It must be impossible for someone who is non-white, or educated, or middle class, to not agree with the Dems. And if you vote Reps, you ain't black.

That's hubris, and you're not entirely wrong there.

But then when you actually look at some of the people that voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and are likely to do so again this time around, then it's profoundly more than that. There is a siginificant voter base who are thick as pig shit by anybody's standards.

The problem is, you can't reach them and convince them othewise, because the uppity Democrat attitude that they are dumb because they don't vote Democrats has done lasting damage. Which brings us back to me not disagreeing with you entirely.

They are just dumb, full stop. Not because they don't see the light and realise that the Democrats are superior in every way. It's kind of hard to explain until you meet people like that in person, and you understand just how unreachable they are. And dumb or small minded intellectually challenged people like that like simplistic slogans and simple answers to their problems, however untruthful. Somebody like Trump delivers on that in a way that no soft spoken Democrat who can tell you every last detail of their party platform ever will.

>>99259
I must admit I've never met anyone like that who explicitly is pro-Trump as I haven't been to the States for over a decade, but I lived with two MAGA hat wearing Trump supporting Brits who did not fit the stereotype at all so I am probably overly critical of the narrative of Trump appealing only to conventional thickos.

One a grammar school educated history PhD holding lecturer; one grew up all over the world as his parents taught in various international schools, he had a BA in philosophy, and was I guess fairly cultured and "intellectual". Both stayed up all night watching the 2016 election results, drinking champagne when Trump's victory was confirmed.

I think Trump's sway is more insidious because it CAN win over people who would typically be liberal or small-c conservative. By scapegoating the thick white working class, we ignore how many educated middle class young men (and women I guess), are falling for Trump's politics. Whether it's a backlash to a decade of progressivism and culture war shit, I don't know, but I'd be say the educated Trumpists are more dangerous as they can spread the message and manipulate people. Some hick in Kentucky does less damage than a Ben Shapiro or Charlie Kirk type.

I only get butthurt about this because Trump destroyed my friendship circle so I hate when educated Trump supporters are disregarded as it's easier to bash hillbillies.

The Democrats have to replace Biden. His cognitive decline was transparently obvious, this is unacceptable for a US president. He's the most powerful man on Earth, not a borough councillor.

>>99261

Trump is equally if not more so deranged. But it is evident no one cares about that. But for Democrat's it is going to be a problem, or at least a perceived problem and talking point. This is the sort of shit the Obama wore a tan suit pearl cluchers will make their sole talking point.

>>99260

>By scapegoating the thick white working class, we ignore how many educated middle class young men (and women I guess), are falling for Trump's politics.

Again, you're not entirely wrong. I'm friends with a former sergeant of the British Army, and he is both a Trump and Reform UK supporter. He is firmly middle class and by no means uneducated, and has seen the world, including frontline duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. He fully supports American exceptionalism and thinks Britain should adopt more policies similar to the Republicans. He admits that Trump may not be the sharpest spoon in the drawer, but thinks that only he can "get the job done".

It's difficult to keep arguing with somebody like that without souring your friendship, so I've pretty much given up.


>Whether it's a backlash to a decade of progressivism and culture war shit, I don't know

Don't underestimate that. American culture has a habit of seeing more drastic pendulum swings than most European countries. You have progressive social movements on the one hand that have been disruptive and momentous in a way that we can't imagine here, but you also have a strong demographic of bootstrap social conservatives, down to a less numerous but very vocal subset who think two transpeople kissing and being allowed to exist at all will bring about the Rapture. Many of those social conservatives have grown increasingly angry with the liberal progressive woke movement that they feel doesn't represent them and has eroded traditional cultural and sexual American morals. And so the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way, again in more extreme ways than what we normally see here in Britain or Europe.

>>99261
The original plan was for Joe Biden to do one term, and then be replaced by his vice-president, Kamala Harris. She a strong black (sorry, Black) independent woman who don’t need no man, y’all. But she is one of the most hated people in politics, it seems. It’s like if Penny Mordaunt offered to replace Rishi Sunak, but only if she got to bring her sidekick, Peter Sutcliffe. So Kamala Harris has been hiding away for four years, and now Biden is all the Democrats can offer. He can’t be replaced.

>>99264

You had to know Kamala Harris was a dud if you spent a bare minimum of time researching her. She doesn't represent people of colour or ethnic minorities and their struggles. If you just look at her track record of being Attorney General and a state prosecutor in the state of California, she was known for being "tough on crime" as they say. What she really did was that she single-handedly contributed to prison overcrowding and draconian sentencing especially of minorities. Who are already overrepresented in America's ever growing prison population. Her affiliation may be with the Democrats, but her true political stance is often deeply closet Republican. And people saw through it. So much so that some called her the black Hillary Clinton for being equally cold hearted.

Obviously the best thing would be to swap out both Biden and Trump for somebody who is actually fit for the job. But that's not going to happen with Trump obviously, not least because of his controlling grip on the Republican Party behind the scenes. But replacing Biden at this point of the race would only dig the hole deeper for the Democrats. Because it would both be an admission of his lackluster performance both as President and as a candidate for re-election. And because the nomination of a non-incumbent candidate for President isn't just something you can pull out of a hat. Both the Republicans and the Democrats have a complex and intricate formalised system of respectively nominating their candidates in state-by-state races, which usually takes the better part of an entire election year. The only way you can really swap out Presidential candidates without causing untold upheaval is the current candidate stepping down for things like health reasons, in which case the candidacy would normally go to the current Vice President Kamala Harris, by which nothing would be won, for the above reasons. Which highlights again how much the Democrats have screwed themselves.

>>99263

>Whether it's a backlash to a decade of progressivism and culture war shit, I don't know

>Don't underestimate that.

Which is the thing that's always wound me up about the liberal progressive sorts. For years my biggest complaint for that avenue of politics was just plain and simply, simmer the fuck down, because what you are inevitably going to bring upon us is worse than what you are trying to fight, and not worth the fleeting victories you have to show for it.

The boilerplate response to that has always been some variation of "no it won't, stop trying to delegitimise the lived experience of POC transfemme judo practitioners, chud." But then we see it happening before our eyes time and again over the last 5-10 years. I want it to be known for posterity: "I Fucking Told You So. Cunt."

>>99260
>>99266
>Whether it's a backlash to a decade of progressivism and culture war shit, I don't know
This would be a hard sell. White middle class men have been more Republican than Democrat for decades - what you're seeing is continuity and party loyalty, rather than change based on shorter term cultural trends. Image is from 2016, so the Clinton/Trump match up, but it's a good guide to what really counts in US voting demography.
In terms of actual results, when Republicans go all-in on the big culture war issue of modern times (BLM's important too, sure, but the chart speaks to race already being America's big dividing line), they tend to get trounced: https://www.ettingermentum.news/p/the-modern-electoral-history-of-transphobia (Obviously written by someone sympathetic to the other side, but results are results.)

>>99266

I normally consider myself a progressive middle of the road person, but it irks me as well that for the last ten years or so, a vastly insignificant minority have assumed that they have the right to tell the other 98 percent of the population how to see and what to think about gender and sexuality. You can go out into the street with a pen and clipboard and ask an endless sample of passers-by, and almost nobody will tell you that they identify as anything other than their outwardly visible birth gender. Also, a good 90 percent will tell you that they are exclusively heterosexual, in line with known robust statistics.

But we're all supposed to subordinate to a bunch of junk science concocted by a handful of people in gender studies and adjacent pseudoscience (but also proper science) that has been permeated and infected by this thought virus.

My issue isn't that some people think they're a platypus or a pencil instead of a man or a woman. Let them be happy with it. But the way that that small but unduly vociferous minority thinks it can just be the tail that wags the dog and deconstruct gender for all the rest of us.

Same with other minorities. I'm all for equal opportunity, for giving women, people of colour, LG HDTV and others a fair chance at being included into society. But the way that that is then used to marginalise somebody like me as a white male, an aging one to boot, is just not something that I will take lying down. Even if you then try to even delegitimise my protest by calling it "white fragility".

>>99268
Ok grandad.

>>99268

You do sound quite boomerish about it but in principle yeah, I know the seniment you are getting at.

I think it is just one of the weird mutations of the way power and ideology works, in an abstract mechanical sense rather than anything even to do with the morons participating, that what started out as a rights advocacy movement for a marginalised demographic, essentially ended up being this sort of meta-social pseudo-HR department.

Like, sexuality doesn't belong to the 90% of straight folks any more, you're best deferring to a trans because obviously, being a trans, they have more innate knowledge and it stands to reason we should let the people it affects make those decisions. Doesn't it? Hmmm. Well...

Of course at various times over the years I veer towards cynicism that it is actually a movement packed to the gills with narcissists who are just using the labels for clout political capital in order to blackmail their way into positions of power, where they then simply leech out money without doing anything of value. I have thought that, at times. I want to say "but then I realise..." but there isn't that bit.

But at the same time it is all kind of irrelevant- By engaging with it at all you fall into the great flytrap it was meant to be all along, and you're not talking about the actual election the thread is about. Honestly I just think the US is a sham democracy and this whole thread may as well be about WWE wrestling, currently in one of it's weakest arcs in years.

>>99267
>Image is from 2016, so the Clinton/Trump match up, but it's a good guide to what really counts in US voting demography.

Nah I think Anthony Scaramucci is right that a lot has changed in American demographics since 2016 but it's not at all been the logic that underpinned the Jeb Republican strategy of Latinos being genetically opposed to immigration law or Blacks being a permanent fixture of the Democrats. There's a lot of division within those lines and a lot that changes between second and third generation immigrants or when you get economically squeezed voters looking at who will be best for their pay packet.

>>99270
>Honestly I just think the US is a sham democracy

It's a sham but I think we're at the cusp of it becoming much worse. I keep thinking back to something John Grey said about the future of the US being seen with Brazil. If Trump really does purge the civil service and move the US to even stronger executive system it probably won't go the route Project 2025 predicts but instead a continual bouncing between the parties with politicians facing prison at the end of their term when the new guys get control and endemic corruption.

I guess we should feel lucky that for all the talk of a multi-polar world it's more like everywhere is fucked. An omnishambles for the human race.

>>99270

>You do sound quite boomerish

I'm Generation X, born in 1974. It's not that we were completely unfamiliar with the concept of things like gender bending or the blurring of stereotypes. Growing up in the 80s with people like Boy George causing apoplectic outrage among the older generation, and other gay perfomers becoming increasingly visible. One of my older cousins almost got kicked out by his conservative parents for being a New Romantic with long hair, occasional makeup and pendant earrings. A bit like early Phil Oakey. But there was a difference. It was all still kind of niche, and nobody in that movement or who had some kind of non-mainstream sexuality was assuming that they could speak for everybody else.

But anyway, you're not wrong that this thread has been derailing a bit.



>>99271

>If Trump really does purge the civil service and move the US to even stronger executive system

The U.S. will become a quasi-autocratic system with Trump and his entourage attempting to remove all the checks and balances they can, and installing their buddies in many relevant positions of power. Democratic institutions in the U.S. will probably (or hopefully) be robust enough to prevent the worst, but it could end up becoming a bit like an American version present-day Russia.

>>99262
You're a complete loon to be comparing Obama in a beige suit to Biden being a mumbling OAP with visible signs of cognitive decline, signs that are mounting month after month. Not only is it a bad campaign strategy to stick to your guns in the face of all rational thought, but this is the POTUS we're talking about. It does actually matter who that is and handing the keys to a senile old man or an evil old man is unacceptable. Trump might a headcase too, but he is more or less the same one he was in 2016. He isn't as visibly aged nor as easily confounded as Biden. It's not partisan sniping to say this, it's plain as day for anyone not burying their head in the sand.

>>99264
>and now Biden is all the Democrats can offer. He can’t be replaced.
Absolute nonsense. There are half-a-dozen prominent US governors who could swoop in and replace Biden. Yes, they'd have to work their arses off, but as they're half Biden's age and up against a buffoon like Trump, it's completely reasonable to persue this option.

>She a strong black (sorry, Black) independent woman who don’t need no man, y’all
It's a pity your abortion didn't properly take but there are optoins available to you to remedy this.

*Repost because I said "senators" when I meant "governors".

Ironically I have feeling that the future of the US, in terms of government and overall world stage behaviour, doesn't look all that much different from Russia today. Give it maybe 30-40 years.

>>99275
Things will improve in a few years. In 2016, I thought Donald Trump becoming president would be the end of decent politics, because he had shown that you can win an election by trolling people on Twitter, and because everybody knows that politicians will say anything to get elected. I fully expected every politician to become a troll, but that never happened. We survived, and even got a Democratic president just one term later, and one who supports trade unions to boot! Obviously we are now in the current situation, so we aren't back on track just yet, but things are so much better than I thought they would be. That being said, in 30-40 years, every country will look like Russia does now, so perhaps I am being naive after all.

>Biden vows to fight on in first speech after Trump debate
>"I know I'm not a young man, to state the obvious," he told a rally in the battleground state of North Carolina on Friday, one day after he struggled in the televised showdown with his Republican rival Donald Trump.

>"I don’t walk as easy as I used to... I don’t debate as well as I used to," he acknowledged. "But I know what I do know, I know how to tell the truth [and] I know how to do this job."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cne4z2p7nl4o

Imagine having the entire planet telling you that you're mentally ill and you choose to soldier on anyway.

Biden's handing the election to Trump who lost anyone sane around him in 2020 and probably has a list of names to deal with. The worst part is it's too late to get rid of Biden without his consent because the electors are already pledged to him.

>>99279
>Imagine having the entire planet telling you that you're mentally ill and you choose to soldier on anyway.
This is basically how I feel posting here. I'm changing my mind, keep going, Mr President!

>>99279
That speech he gave was really good, though. He came across fantastically in that. There is the slight issue that he was reading it off an autocue, but if he can do that in the next debate, he'll be fine. If he can't, of course, then it will definitely be time to replace him (Barack Obama did very badly in his first debate in 2008, but he still won), and then we'll have the awkward situation of a Democratic candidate who missed the first two debates.

In other news, the New York Times, which definitely wants the Democrats to win, has come out and told Joe Biden to withdraw: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/opinion/biden-election-debate-trump.html

>>99280

The Presidential Election isn't the Special Olympics.

>>99282
Are you being intentionally difficult or are you just dense?

>>99281

>In other news, the New York Times, which definitely wants the Democrats to win, has come out and told Joe Biden to withdraw

Not going to happen.

We've now got the improbable situation where Trump is running against somebody who is worse than him.

The Democrats have fucked themselves by not building up a worthy and promising successor to Biden, who was always just going to be a one-term President. In the best possible scenario, Kamala Harris would have become the Democratic candidate for this election. But now that she has predictably turned out to be a dud, the Democrats have shot themselves in the foot in two ways.

I still don't think Trump winning will be the end of it. Given his criminal energy that he has displayed multiple times, he'll probably end up getting removed from office for some serious felony. His return to power may end up resembling a coup d'état, but he and his entourage won't be able to control power so completely that there will be no vestiges of democratic checks and balances left to hold him accountable if he does break the law.

The one thing you have to understand about American politics is that the social left/right and the economic left/right axis tend to line up more than they do here. It's easy to blame them all being thick, they are, but it's stopping several steps short of the real explanation.

In this country your working class voter wanted us out of the EU and wants all the brown-eyed people turfed out, he wants the death penalty bringing back and he is sick of "woke" people just intangibly ruining life somehow. But his principles on those matters are not at all inconsistent with the fact he'd like to see trains and utilities brought back into public ownership, and he wants councils and public services funded properly because "that's what I pay me bluddy taxes for innit?"

In America, your equivalent working class voter feels much the same about the first half, but on the second half, they have been convinced over decades of Red Scare McCarthy-era orthodoxy that socialism is The Great Enemy, and anything even approaching it is anti-American and worse, anti-Christian. Their deepest conviction is that the government should take their hands out of the economy, tax them less, and then everything would be better.

Understanding the basic retardation (in both senses of the word) of American class consciousness enables you to understand why it's no surprise guys like Trump get in so easily and pose a real threat when they do. When the entire system is built around an unshakeable economic orthodoxy and only the ephemeral cultural politics are able to move anybody, populists are essentially abusing an exploit. It's a glitch that should have been patched out, but instead there was only a gentleman's agreement not to use it.

The Democrats have fuck all. If you think Kier Starmer's Labour is offering a big fat load of nothing in our upcoming election, then you understand one tenth of how entirely fucking hollow the Democrats are in the US.

>>99300

Yep, socialism ist the big bogeyman. And the problem is that even the poorest have been indoctrinated that any kind of free health service and social safety net like our NHS or JSA and other benefits that help people stay afloat in times of hardship are basically evil and anti-American. When they're the ones who would benefit the most. When one ambulance ride to the hospital can cost in excess of $3000 and an A&E visit can be again almost that on top of it. Small change for people making six figures and up, but almost insurmountable for some poor white trash lad who works at a service station.

That's also the reason why the poor don't realise they were screwed by Trump during his 2016-2020 term, and again won't realise if he is elected again. That kind of propaganda runs so deep in middle of the road American thinking from the poor to the rich that nobody really questions it. And then when you point to people being healthier and living generally happier and more worry free lives in countries like the UK with a strong safety net, they'll STILL tell you things like, freedom isn't free, or you're not really free unless you're free to fail. They'll rather carry the consequences and lose everything they have and sleep in a cardboard box under a carriageway than stop and think that maybe it's not such a bad thing after all to have at least a bit more of a safety net.

And it's on the news there every day that covid and inflation have caused a homelessness pandemic of unprecedented proportions that even leaves many formerly stable middle class people on the street. And it STILL doesn't register with them that that's what you get when you think universal healthcare and benefits that you can actually survive on for a time are un-American and socialist.

>>99307
That's their entire country's philosophy since it was founded, though, so I'm hardly surprised. The history of the USA can more or less be summarised as "lunatic Puritan extremists set up their own country where the government does as little as possible." Frustratingly, it seems to work for them, which gives rise to Liz Truss saying that the key to wealth is to create a tax haven with a handful of negligently lazy layabouts representing the interests of the people against the multinational corporations who have replaced all their colleagues. I might be willing to accept this philosophy if it had ever worked over here, but it clearly doesn't.

>>99308

>Frustratingly, it seems to work for them

It works for the elites who own everything and reap the benefits of such a laissez-faire system, yeah. It doesn't work for the average person at all. You can look at the wages for certain jobs, and see that they are two or three times higher for the same job in this country, and you'd naturally think things are miles better over there. But that's only looking at half the story.

Much like ours, if for very different reasons, America is an economy with deep, deep, generational rot, that's just starting to show up in a way that's hard to ignore. They have been able to paper over it for a while now, but it's starting to become the elephant in the room even for the wealthier middle classes.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRitaT2ZX9o

>>99310

(Not sure why the video didn't work, let's try again)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-3c76f0USE

>>99310

> You can look at the wages for certain jobs, and see that they are two or three times higher for the same job in this country, and you'd naturally think things are miles better over there. But that's only looking at half the story.

The problem is that wages and salaries have ballooned in recent years together with prices. A trained nurse in the U.S. can now make well over $100K. According to Google, by comparison the average annual salary of a registered nurse in the UK is currently £36K. But with prices in the U.S. having gone up in a way they haven't since the Great Inflation of the 1960s to early 80s, you'll actually struggle to live as well as an NHS nurse in the UK.

I saw something on youtube a while ago about young under-30 professionals in the U.S., who are university educated and making $100K or more, but they are still struggling to get by and they're living paycheck to paycheck to pay for mortgages, car leases, and all other expenses that now cost absolute silly money.

It's an epic rat race in the U.S.. Money rules everything. I'm glad it's not (entirely) like that here.

>The situation will not be helped by two excruciating gaffes that will be remembered by anyone who watched.

>In his very first answer, he called his own Vice-President Kamala Harris "Vice-President Trump" – a painful faceplant in front of a national television audience.

>That came just an hour after another headline-grabbing mistake at a Nato event, when Mr Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as "President Putin", prompting loud gasps in the audience.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgl75kdm420o

Imagine how doddery he'll be in three or four years.

>>99602
The whole thing is a sorry shame.

In the blue corner, Joe Biden, who is very clearly losing his marbles. In the red corner, Donald Trump, a convicted criminal who has apparently fooled people into thinking he had any marbles to begin with.

>>99603
I wonder at times how this can be anything but a parody. We have two men, one not a bad sort but clearly past the point of pipe and slippers, the other Donald Trump, as the two contenders for leader of the "free world '. Surely the democrats have some way of straight up saying No to Joe?

>>99604
They do; they nominate their presidential candidate at their convention, which hasn’t even happened yet. They could easily nominate someone else. The problem is that anyone else they nominate (apart from the despised Kamala Harris) won’t have the contacts who have promised to fund their campaign, and it’s too late to go schmoozing with them all now. Plus, if the Democrats all fragment into factions for a new leadership battle, then whoever wins is guaranteed to be unpopular with plenty of voters who either backed a different candidate, or who see the new winner as an opportunist.

I still think they’re going to get rid of Biden. The wheels can probably move a lot faster than expected if the alternative is a criminal who didn’t deny wanting to become president for life. Biden’s not even that doddery; we’ve all said the wrong name sometimes. But he now needs to never make another slip for four months, and nobody can do that.

>>99605
>Biden’s not even that doddery; we’ve all said the wrong name sometimes. But he now needs to never make another slip for four months, and nobody can do that.

It's not just about him being fit for president now, it's about him being fit for the next four years. If he won he'd be 86 by the end of his term.

>>99602
Someone needs to trip this geezer down a a short flight of steps. The stuff Biden said a few days ago about "so long as I've given it my all, that's what this is all about", regarding potentially losing to Trump in the election, was mindblowing to me. It speaks to a level of self-importance not seen since Narcissus and confirms that even if he's completely unfit, he won't recuse himself from the race. And it's not just my unsubstantiated bloviation, the guy's polling like absolute shit. He has a 36% approval rating and, as I understand it, polls worse than Democratic state leaders across the board. According to Paul Begala, a former Bill Clinton advisor, presidents don't get reelected on less than a 45% approval rating. The only reason Biden can claim to look competitive is because the Republicans have lost their marbles, what little they had to begin with anyway, and gone all in on a historically unpopular candiate themselves, one who has skeletons practically spilling out of his closet.

I really try not to pay this much attention to US politics, but this saga is so beyond the pale I can help myself.

>>99606
Yes, but he doesn’t need to win an election at the end of his term. He can be as doddery as he likes in 2025 onwards.

>>99608
That thought in the minds of voters is why he is going to lose the election.

I had a look online for a free “cognitive test” like people want Joe Biden to take. SEO motherfuckers have taken over all the search results, and the one I clicked had nothing to do with dementia and was actually just another IQ test. But I’ll tell you what: it was hard. No wonder Joe Biden is reluctant to take one.

https://cerebrumiq.com/

>>99607
I think this doesn't go far enough in the damage Biden is about to do with his ego because he's also destroying the popularity of anyone running for the House. Even New York has turned into a battleground state for Trump. It's like watching the can-do values of the US turn in and destroy it.

So I'm looking forward to marking the Brezhnev era of the US no matter who wins.

>Someone needs to trip this geezer down a a short flight of steps.

While we're all getting ourselves a free flight to Gitmo, I think the best outcome for the US election would be if both candidates died. That'll certainly put the shits up Putin won't it.

>>99611
>the Brezhnev era of the US
I would argue that Joe Biden is really more of a Konstantin Chernenko. He’s a very old man who followed another very unpopular old man, and he’s so decrepit that the entire government is pretty much playing Weekend at Bernie’s at this point. So while things will come close to totally collapsing, there will be some excellent reforms in 2028 which will admittedly completely implode the country.

Someone just shot at Donald Trump, possibly. It's breaking news, so breaking that the only YouTube link I can find was still a live stream, but the stream is playing replays of it:

Officially, it might not have been an assassination attempt as yet, but "popping noises" were heard which could be gunfire or maybe just a paintball gun or something.

>>99617
It'll turn out to be bollocks.
But it adds fire to the utter thick cunts who like him.

>>99618
He reacts very quickly. I've never really thought that presidents must get training in how to react if someone shoots at you, but he clearly has and I guess it makes sense for that training to exist. There must be a White House employee somewhere whose job is to shoot at the president once a week or so during rehearsals, and what I want to know now is how I can get that job.

>>99617
>maybe just a paintball gun or something.
That sound defintely isn't a paintball gun. For the record, shooting one of those at a president is probably one the few ideas worse than shooting an actual gun at one.

Trump is going to romp home to victory now; America is fucked. And if the world catches a cold when the USA sneezes, we're also fucked.

>>99620
The Dems can still boot Joe to the Curb, this may light a fire under some of them.

>>99621
I don't know if that play works anymore. However, the decrepit, ailing, narcissist currently in the White House has absolutely no hope of beating pic related.

I can only assume the shooter immediately died of embarrassment, knowing that they'd just fucked countless people all around the globe to Lord knows what horrors. This could be an era defining event, because, frankly, I don't know where a second, even more hate and rage-filled, Trump presidency leads.

If I find out the shooter was using a .22 I'm going to hit the roof.

>>99622
>If I find out the shooter was using a .22 I'm going to hit the roof.
That's what eyewitness reports are suggesting; the shots sounded like a small gun. However, someone in the crowd was hit and did die, so clearly the gun was powerful enough to kill somebody.

Joe Biden is from Pennsylvania. And we know he has the motive. And at his age, I bet he's a crap shot who would miss an obese stationary target multiple times.

>>99621
No, at this point Biden has at least gifted the party by making sure they're not going to waste a good candidate on this election.

>>99623
This whole affair really casts the maxim "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" into a much poorer light. Personally I prefer "if you're not going to put a 10mm hollow point directly into Trump's cranium, don't take the shot". I mean, what's going on!? You can practice shooting guns all day in the USA, no one would bat an eyelid, but this moron didn't even get close to Trump.

Also I'm sure pic relate will go well.

The shots were 5.56 NATO, i.e. a proper military rifle calibre. The shooter was using a suppressor, which is why it sounds "small". It's one of those things like birdsong or engine noises - very easy to distinguish once you've got your ear in, but near-impossible to usefully describe.

Eyeballing the distances and sightlines, I think that either the shooter was incredibly inexperienced or Trump was unbelievably lucky. It's the kind of shot that the average American enthusiast could make with their eyes closed.

This isn't going to end well.

Maybe I'm reading too many airport novels but my first thought was it being an inside job to secure the vote. That photograph of him with the fist up is too perfect, and I feel like day one of secret service training is to not let the president stick his head up and break the cover you're providing.

>>99627
I saw a lot of people online saying similar things and no offense but you're all incredibly dumb. It was actually quite disheartening to see that people, nominally, on "my side" are almost as prone to conspiracy thought as the PizzaGate-Qanon crowd, under the right circumstances.

So... where do we go from here.

Trump wounded fatally would have set the world on a different course than it is now going to take. Not saying I approve of political killings, because I really don't, under any circumstances. But it's only going to fuel the raging dumpster fire that is American politics.

>>99629

I appreciate you think I'm thick, and I suspect you think there's some sort of emotional or political reason for me thinking about it, but really it's just a cynical world view combined with knowledge of the insane things the US government has done in the past.

If they can do MKULTRA they can convince a rube to fire a blank at the president.

>>99625
>this moron didn't even get close to Trump.
He hit him in the ear. The ear is part of the head. Donald Trump got shot in the head. A gust of wind could have changed the outcome here.

>>99631
>they can convince a rube to fire a blank at the president.
They sure could, but they bloody didn't because blanks don't do what happened to Trump. In many ways, that's the whole point of blank rounds.

>>99627
That was my thought too, but it's just a natural instinct to question things like this. They just pointed out on the news that everyone has immediately stopped talking about Joe Biden's senility and moved on to this. If Joe Biden can make a really good response to this, he might even improve his chances.

>>99632

>He hit him in the ear. The ear is part of the head. Donald Trump got shot in the head. A gust of wind could have changed the outcome here.

At several hundred feet, I think the press are saying 500 feet, that becomes a consideration. Rifle bullets can travel in excess of 1000 metres per second, which equals roughly 2,200 mph. At that kind of velocity and that kind of distance, even minute changes in wind speed and air density along a projectile's path can make all the difference.

If it turns out that the shooter was a professionally trained sniper with some kind of military background, then hitting somebody with a stripe shot at the top of the ear when you were aiming for the middle of their head it isn't that impressive, and at 500 feet he should have hit his target dead-on. But it's somewhat of a feat for a regular gun enthusiast to come that close at such a distance. Just look out your window for something that is 500 feet away and imagine pointing a rifle at it.

>>99633

Whilst you are picking over the details of how competant you need to be to make that shot, remember you are on borrowered time all through making that shot. You have to spot and shoot your target before multiple people whos expressed job is to look out for people like you notice you. There were litterally sniper rifles pointed the opposite way for that expressed purpose. when sharp shoots train to shoot at a coin they aren't doing under that kind of time constraint.

>>99630
>But it's only going to fuel the raging dumpster fire that is American politics.

It's not the first time a US President has been shot, the deciding factor will be how this experiance changes Trump. Reagan getting shot in a CIA plot led by George Bush Snr might have ended the Cold War in a roundabout way. Or at least it gave him a messianic complex.

But it'll probably be fine.

>>99633

500 feet is close range for a rifle. A half-decent modern rifle will consistently put rounds within a 1.5" group at that range. 10mph of 90 degree sidewind would induce just over 2" of drift with bog-standard 55gr 5.56.

It might sound like a hard shot to someone with no shooting experience, but it's trivial for a typical American recreational shooter. There are no complex ballistic calculations at that range, just putting a dot on the target and letting off the trigger without flinching. To miss at least four clear shots is prima facie evidence that this guy was very inexperienced.

I'm not saying this to be Billy Big Balls, just to give the perspective of a dogshit amateur shooter. The worst shooter at my club would make that shot without any fuss and he's the wrong side of 70.

>>99633
I think it's closer to 300 feet but, as otherlad says, you'd had a seriously puckering arsehole when you're trying to shoot the former President from the only vantage point in the area while people nearby are shouting and trying to alert the authorities about you.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Mrt2Lwy7nHEAQshv7

>>98241
A marmite smear of dog shit, or a Nutella smear of fox shit. A shit sandwich one way or or another.

A sniper's dream, they used to call him.

>>99636

>To miss at least four clear shots is prima facie evidence that this guy was very inexperienced.

You can see Trump getting down after the first shot, so at that point you're introducing the complication of a moving target. Obviously the shooter should have been able to anticipate this, but somebody who is already just above rookie level will struggle to then still deliver a fatal shot. Of course he could then have aimed for other parts of Trump's not so slender body, but evidently this lad wanted Trump dead, and any bullet wound to the rest of your body greatly increases your chances of survival when compared to a clear headshot.

>>99636

It doesn't look like a hard shot to make, but you can imagine how it's totally different making it under that kind of pressure. The guy will have been shaking like a shitting dog with Parkinson's. All the time in the world shooting targets at the range won't prepare a person for that. If the shooter was not a military veteran with experience of firing under stress, I think it's pretty understandable and not necessarily a sign of inexperience at shooting itself.

I think if we're going to debate how hard a shot it is to make, we should probably disclose how much experience we have with firearms. Gaming does not count.

>>99642

I'm pretty good at laser tag.

Sorry for bringing up the kind of ammunition used. I think that might have kickstarted the running critique of the shooter's performance. I'd just meant to make reference to the Reagan assassination attempt, in which John Hinckley used the tiniest bullets possible, and as such failed to stop neo-liberalism dead in it's tracks (I know it's more complicated than that, please don't start having a go at me).

He looked surprisingly ordinary for a lad who had it in him to do this sort of thing.

>>99642
I went paintballing once.

>>99641

My yes, but... would be that Americans are fucking mental. The quality of training and the standard of shooting among ordinary hobbyists is way beyond what you would reasonably expect. A remarkable number of American civilians are seriously training for a civil war.

How do I get a secret service waifu?

>>99645
He looks like the chud meme.

>>99645
Elf archer is such a boring class.

I should get into D&D one day.

>>99648
I'm glad I wasn't the only one whose gaze immediately drifted in the pictures. History is going to get lot hornier as it becomes more equal.

Obviously nobody deserves to die in an attempt on their life, no matter how much of a controversial, misguided human being they are. This is no way to express political disagreement in any civilised country.

But the bullets that missed or barely hit Trump will end up doing even more damage to American politics than they otherwise would have. And that includes the way Trump will exploit this event for his campaign, and the way his followers will eat it up.

>>99651
There could be proof the shooter was a full on hardcore republican who prefers De Santis and his mob will still blame it on woke traitors.

>>99651
>And that includes the way Trump will exploit this event for his campaign, and the way his followers will eat it up.

I imagine it's already been monetised with flags, t-shirts and so on of that picture of him.

>>99651
I don't know actually and I think it's a shame that nobody has spoken of the assassination attempt as less a personal attack and more one on the American republic. Although maybe I've just become too aware of the fall of the Roman Republic and the chaos of interwar Japan.

The worst outcome would have been if Trump had been killed and America took up the lesson that you can kill political opponents. Trumpism probably would die with Trump but that's opening pandoras box for something far worse and you'd see some very, very angry conspiracy theories swirling around.

>>99654

>The worst outcome would have been if Trump had been killed and America took up the lesson that you can kill political opponents

The shooter was a registered Republican voter. Also, nobody took up that lesson after Kennedy as an incumbent President was fatally shot in a very similar way to this.

>>99650
While you lot were watching the football I did what I said I'd do and had a short D&D game using Gemini as DM.

It was alright. I played as a Bard that stumbled on a goblin cave in his travels and went to a nearby village to lead a mob, we burnt fire outside the cave to kill most of them off and then when a big fuckers came out I used archers to blind him and get him to surrender. Long-story short, I provoked the remaining goblins to turn on their cruel master for their freedom.

I should give it a go sometime.

>>99642

I've been a target shooter for as long as I remember and have hunted, mostly vermin.

400 foot shot on a target isn't necessarily difficult, in ideal conditions. But when you factor in crawling around on a roof waiting to be discovered and shot yourself, plus the adrenaline of the whole idea of taking a human life, not least one which will change the course of history, I'd say getting his ear is still a pretty impressive shot.

From the footage it looks as if trumps swede was saved by him turning his head probably at the exact moment the trigger was pulled.

>>99658

It reminded me of that scene in The Day of The Jackal where President de Gaulle leans his head forward at just the right moment for the bullet to miss him. From about 1:15 minutes in this clip:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5SuA0EKY8M

The cut on his ear was from the teleprompter's glass shattering, not being grazed by the bullet.

>>99660
I read that the night of, but I've only seen it reported as a bullet wound since. I'm open to being proven wrong, mind you.

>>99661
I tried to cite it and found conflicting information so fuck knows.

>Would-be Trump assassin tried to join school shooting club but was rejected for being a ‘comically bad’ shot

Fucking told you lads.

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/thomas-matthew-crooks-donald-trump-gunman-terrible-shot/