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/

>>99663
Lee Harvey Oswald was a terrible shot too. I think if anyone who was an actual good shot wanted to kill the President, they would just join the Secret Service like that man who actually killed Kennedy.

>>99664

I'm not sure if you're joking, but Oswald served in the Marines and earned the sharpshooter badge. He was a headbanger, but he could definitely shoot.

>>99663

>he was rejected for being a terrible shot.

Well he showed them. Being off by about an inch at 500 feet isn't really "comically" bad. Especially given the circumstances. It's not exceedingly good, but he should have made the school's gun club with that.

It looks like they vet pupils before they can join their shooting club, because the article says another reason he got rejected was his predilection for "off-colour jokes". But with all the school shootings taking place in the U.S., is it really a good idea to promote gun ownership even more among youngsters. They'll probably tell you that it teaches teens responsibility when handling guns. And as an argument, it's not as absurd as you'd like it to be. But all it takes is one kid who slips through their vetting process and then uses what he's learned at shooting practice to kill people.

>>99666

I'd probably argue those lads who make the "off colour jokes" and probably post on dodgy internet forums and don't have a lot of mates are exactly who they should be taking in to gun clubs. Not to teach them how to shoot, but because it will give them a bit of a social circle and some structured activity to focus on, and I feel like that alone would be enough to steer a would-be school shooter away from that course.

It's frustrating because it's the same thing you see time and time again, whether it's with the frog posters or the incels or whatever, that everyone's response is to shame and ostracise and mock them. When that in itself is a major component of the process that drives them deeper into their fringe views and leads them to revolting against "the system" as they see it.

>>99670

I was a loner for much of my teen years. The problem is that while that all sounds good in theory, it's not how group dynamics work at that age.

I never had any violent tendencies, not physically and not in my thoughts. I was quite the opposite. But I remember how hard it was for me as somebody who just didn't really fit in anywhere. I didn't get any charity from people who might have thought it was a good idea to include me.

But, to be fair, not every marginalised loner is a ticking timebomb. So beyond its own merit, it's a bit overblown to suggest that every loner misfit needs to be socially included so he won't become the next incel school shooter.

>>99670
>or the incels
>>99671
>become the next incel school shooter.
Have we got rid of the wordfilter? I liked that wordfilter.

>>99672

I think it's only active on /b/. This is /pol/.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-no-poll-boost-after-assassination-attempt-us-election-1925680

>Donald Trump has not received a poll boost in the first presidential election survey conducted since the failed assassination attempt on Saturday.

>The poll, conducted by Morning Consult on 2,045 registered voters on Monday, reveals that Trump is leading Joe Biden by just one percentage point on 46 percent, compared to the president's 45 percent. The poll has a margin of error of +/- two percentage points.

>The findings also reveal that Trump's lead has narrowed slightly since the firm's previous survey, conducted between July 12 and 14, which put Trump two percentage points ahead on 44 percent to Biden's 42 percent.


Could the Seppos actually be coming to their senses?

>>99674
I can't see how him getting shot would change your view on Trump. Most people have a fairly defined opinion of him already.

>>99675

It could go one way or the other. It could get him plenty of sympathy votes in the polls. Then again, voters tend to have very short memory. A survived murder attempt on its own isn't going to carry him all the way into the beginning of November.

>>99674
Well, he lost one voter out of the crowd when he got shot, maybe two when you consider the assassin was a registered Republican, so the shooting must have convinced at least one person to vote for him just to keep the numbers level. Yes, that is how it works.

>>99677

>Yes, that is how it works.

Right... even when you've got a one-percent lead, fine, maybe a two-percent lead, with a voting population of about 161 million registered voters.

This photo gives me the same unsettling feeling as some David Lynch films.

>>99679
Does Trump have really small thumbs?

>>99680

He's got tiny hands. He tries to hide it with sleeves that are too long, but it just makes his tiny hands look even tinier.

Looks like the shooter didn't just have a grudge against Donald Trump.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/07/18/trump-shooter-researched-royal-family-while-planning-attack/

>Investigators told Congress that Thomas Crooks, 20, who was killed by US Secret Service after he fired at the former president at a rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania on Saturday, had searched online for various high-profile figures as he “scoped out” the target for assassination, including an unnamed member of the British Royal family.

>Since Saturday, FBI agents have since been investigating a possible motive for the attack, including by downloading the content of two mobile phones he owned.

>The devices contained images of Trump and Joe Biden, and the dates of both of the former president’s rallies and the Democratic National Convention, which will take place in Chicago next month.

There's a clip going around of a woman in the crowd apparently filming the shooting with abandon, as though expectant. She appears to anticipate where the shot will be coming from, even smiles when the gun pop's are heard.

It makes me wonder if I could keep a cool head in the situation, realising that I'd probably be out of the firing line thus in no immediate danger, no need to cower and might aswell film it.

>>99685

I guess your natural instinct is to flinch and put the camera down so that whatever happens is out of shot. And when there's a shooter in a crowd, everybody will fall into mass panic anyway.


> She appears to anticipate where the shot will be coming from, even smiles when the gun pop's are heard.

You can be sure that the Secret Service was probably all over her to see if she had any involvement in it.

I don't get what the fuss was all about, the guy was just exercising his Second Amendment rights to take his gun to a public place and shoot people with it. Anyway, everyone knows this is Activision's fault for letting kids play COD or something.

>>99687
Using guns against powerful men who wish to trample on American freedoms is exactly what the Second Amendment was created for. That's probably why the Secret Service shot him; they knew that if they arrested him they'd just have to let him go again.

>>99687

>the guy was just exercising his Second Amendment rights to take his gun to a public place and shoot people with it


To state the obvious - that's still (attempted) murder. Which isn't legal.

You are also free to drive a car on public roads, but you're not allowed to hit people or run them over with it.

It'll be interesting to see how it affects Trump's stance on gun laws. Probably not at all, as the NRA is traditionally a noteworthy donor to the Republican party. Trump will probably maintain the narrative that this was one deranged gunman. Guns don't kill people, y'know.

https://www.thetrace.org/2020/08/nra-2020-election-spending-trump/

>>99688
>powerful men who wish to trample on American freedoms is exactly what the Second Amendment was created for
What's Trump doing, then?

>>99690

He's taking the country back from the clutches of them woke commie Democrats who stole the last election. Y'know. FREEDOM!!

If Trump wins a second term, thankfully it will be his last, as the 22nd Amendment forbids anybody from being elected as President more than twice.

The only way around that would be to repeal that amendment and create a new one in its place, for which a two-thirds House majority of votes would be needed. Unless Trump wins with that kind of seat majority in the November election, it's highly unlikely. So the angle of attack will probably be to try to reinterpret the 22nd Amendment, in that he'll argue that this only applies to consecutive terms. Which would be showing a special kind of disdain and disregard for the Constitution and political convention, but after all, this is Trump we're talking about. Being the despot that he is, I'm pretty sure he'll leave nothing unattempted.

>>99692
The 22nd allows no room for interpretation. You can't be elected more than twice. A more plausible route to a third term is to stand as VP and have the new president resign.

>>99693

>The 22nd allows no room for interpretation.

The election results in 2020 also allowed no room for interpretation. And yet, he tried to bully his way back into the White House, breaking a series of anti-election interference laws, intimidating election officials, and flat out instigating an insurgence.

Trump is obviously somebody who doesn't give a fuck. That's what a lot of people don't understand. He's somebody who doesn't play by established rules. I predict that if he is elected, much of the second half of his coming term will be focused on figuring out how to beat the 22nd Amendment.

>>99695
Yes, and that went absolutely nowhere too.

>>99696

It's not just about succeeding or not. But also about the damage it will cause to American democracy and its institutions. And let's also not forget that the Trump years from 2016-2020 have already had a lasting effect on institutions like the U.S. Supreme Court, which just recently wrote Trump a blank check regarding his immunity in the January 6 uprising. This is the result of Trump installing several new Supreme Court justices that lean towards him.

And just take a look at the Republican Party's Project 2025, which is pretty much their roadmap in the case of an election win. Part of what they aim to do is that they'll replace some 50,000 government officials with Republican-leaning personnel to ensure that key institutions will toe the line and back Trump policy, however questionable.

Circumventing the 22nd Amendmend will be difficult, but if all institutions of power are assimilated and your country has effectively become a banana republic with no real institutional opposition to a President like Trump, then that will make it far easier.

>>99693
That wouldn't work either, because to be VP you must be eligible for the top job.

>>99697
>Part of what they aim to do is that they'll replace some 50,000 government officials with Republican-leaning personnel to ensure that key institutions will toe the line and back Trump policy, however questionable.
This would be a disaster, but not for the obvious reason people might think. The current political appointee class is about 4000, and at no point did Trump manage to fill them all. IIRC something like half the posts were still vacant about halfway through his term. If they're struggling to fill 4000 posts, no way they're filling 50,000, even with that stupid database they claim to be building.

>>99699

You're missing the point. It's not going to be about competence or aptitude or qualification, but about filling public service jobs with loyal Trump supporters. That's going to be the main requirement. It's about Gleichschaltung. Look that word up on wikipedia.

>>99700
>You're missing the point.
I'm really not. You're worried that they're going to take over the ship and then run it into an iceberg. I'm telling you they don't have the numbers to take the ship in the first place. Let's say they go ahead and reclassify those 50,000 posts. They're going to end up with one of two things: lots of civil service holdovers or lots of vacancies. Which they end up with depends on whether they get rid of the civil servants before or after making the political appointments.

>>99697

>the damage it will cause to American democracy

Can't help rolling my eyes there lad. On a national level, America isn't a democracy, it's an oligarchy. I'm not saying that to be edgy or whatever, it's pretty much just the most objective way of actually understanding the structure of the USA. There was a pretty famous study on it doing the rounds ten years ago, two years before the Trumpocalypse, and there's no reason to assume things have changed in the meantime.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

https://act.represent.us/sign/usa-oligarchy-research-explained

American democracy functions on a much more local level. State governors and city mayors and whatnot all actually have a level of control over the running of their region, for better or worse, than any councillor does over here. And largely, that's the way it's meant to be. American democracy is both meaningless and arguably non-existent at the state level, but that's the same reason people like Trump really pose little threat. Even if they smash the machinery of the state to bits, this is America we are talking about, it's built from the ground up not to need it.

The only thing to worry about a Trump government for, unless you're some hysterical Yank west coast idpol dickhead, is if he starts cunt offs internationally, which if anything, his previous run at it suggested the opposite. I by no means like the cunt, he embodies almost the complete opposite of my views on everything that matters, but I always find it hard to ignore how all the more vitriolic hatred about the guy comes from a very dishonest centre liberal position. It relies on pretending America isn't already one of the most unhinged fundamentally right wing countries on earth to start with and likely always will be.

>>99702
This. Effectively, the real domestic risk for a second Trump term is that the federal government becomes completely paralysed, and he packs the Supreme Court with more people like Thomas and Alito who seek to effectively dismantle the federal government, except when it suits them.

In his latter years in the Senate, John McCain talked about a "return to regular order", because after the Republicans took control of Congress in 2011 they effectively decided to stop governing and just start obstructing instead, until they controlled both chambers, and even then didn't get much done. For the first two years of Trump's term, Republicans controlled both chambers in Congress. Besides the various must-pass stuff and the tax cuts for the wealthy, they didn't get all that much done then either. They were mostly interested in sucking his cock while he was in office until they could be relieved, and the relief never came.

More than a decade on from REDMAP, and the US currently has the least productive Congress in history. The current Congress has a legislative completion count in the low double digits. People used to complain about Obama "legislating by Executive Order", but maybe if Congress had passed some fucking laws he wouldn't have had to do it. Yet somehow Congress is even less productive than that time. Republicans in the House have mostly made a show of continuing to suck Trump's cock, even outside of the White House, while almost entirely losing their majority and achieving literally nothing in the process.

The real danger for the domestic agenda is that idiots somehow re-elect these cunts to office, and they continue to do literally nothing, pushing more power down to the states, where in many places Republicans more or less have free rein to do whatever they like.

It's been said before. Some people are saying that 2024 will be the most important election in recent history, and they are wrong. The most important election in recent history was in 2016, and the American people failed the assignment.

Biden just announced he will no longer seek re-election.

And so the wheel turns.

>>99704
The headline on The Guardian says "following debate debarcle", but the guy's visibly coming apart in every public appearance. A year ago I'd have said he's lost a step, but every clip I see now he's all over the place. It's fair to point out that they are just clips, not full interviews, but you can't have a guy who fucks up every time he goes on camera being the president of the USA. Unless he's Donald Trump, but he's got his own set of rules so that's besides the point.

It's a terrible thing, aging.

>>99704
Hurray! I mean, he was a good president. I predict he will go down in history as an underrated star of US domestic policy. All Democrats should be like him. They just need to be 30 years younger than him.

Has anything like this happened before? I guess presidents have died in office, but has there ever been a candidate with an actual chance of winning who has pulled out of the race at such a late stage?

High stakes. Old white guy with a huge right wing conservative voter base against a black woman.

The Democrats have had a two-term black President and right after that a woman candidate. So technically a black woman now running isn't something outrageously new. It could sway dissatisfied traditional Democrat voters who weren't happy with Biden running for re-election. Perhaps even enough to outnumber the Trump vote. But it's not going to change a single archconservative Republican voter's mind about which box they'll tick in the booth. It's only going to make them want Trump more.

>>99707
Is a Swing Voter even a thing for the yanks?
I get the impression they're essentially born into the red or blue camp and thats it.

>>99708

Like in many Western countries in the last few decades, voter loyalty isn't what it used to be. And to some extent that is also true for the Seppos.

>>99708
It's not quite as partisan as that. However, Biden does poll worse than state level Democrats, and given how preposterously close US elections are (we're talking tens-of-thousands of voters making the difference in 2020), even putting off a seemingly miniscule portion of swing voters or people who would otherwise choose to stay home could be disasterous for the Dems.

>>99707
>It's only going to make them want Trump more.
Well, yeah, no shit. But as the Democrats found out in 2016 it doesn't matter how hard you vote, it's still only one vote. Trump is an absolutely dogshit candidate and it's only Biden's rank unpopularity in comparison to other Democrats that's kept this race close. The reverse is probably true as well.

>>99707
You're forgetting that Kamala is also deeply unpopular in the US. The Democrats are now running Black Hillary against the guy who defeated the last one.

If the Democrats had sense they would run a lightning quick selection contest with Kamala being one option but I have full confidence that the US party political system would never entertain such a thought. Not when the big donors are already pissed off and there's a risk that the wrong person might win.

5000 candles in the wind.

>>99711
I saw something on the BBC website, maybe last week, which said that Kamala Harris actually isn't that unpopular. I was as shocked as you are, but if it's true, then great, job done, America is saved. Americans know exactly how bad Donald Trump is; the Democrats just need someone who is neither senile nor a sanctimonious and self-important fascist. Yes, she's black Hillary, but if she's also good Hillary then that could be enough.

>>99712
How long is his arm?

>>99711

>The Democrats are now running Black Hillary against the guy who defeated the last one.

But there's hindsight now. Everybody knows that all the bad predictions about Trump in office came true after he got elected.

You're making it sound like Black Hillary equals a low-rent Hillary. I'm not sure that's fair.

This news means that the stunningly beautiful American newsreader has wormed her way onto the BBC Ten O’Clock News. She’s very good-looking, but people with American accents must not under any circumstances be permitted to present the BBC News. It reduces the prestigious journalism to effectively feel like hotel TV, that you’d never watch if you had a choice. She makes it feel like CNN.

At least I know her name now: she is Sumi Somaskanda.

>>99706
> I mean, he was a good president. I predict he will go down in history as an underrated star of US domestic policy. All Democrats should be like him.

Insane.

>>99713
>>99715

The problem isn't just her constant word salad and gaffs but the fact that her record as a DA is significantly more chequered than anything Starmer had. She's a cop and the Democrats have much better candidates to be running.

>>99711
Harris is absolutely nothing like Hilary Clinton. Clinton was widely seen as a narcissist, having the air of someone who thought she was "owed" the presidency, she had decades of baggage, ranging from racist statements in the 1990s, a longstanding opposition to gay marriage that was only reversed long after the tide had turned and her hawkishness regarding the Iraq War hung over her like a thunderous black cloud. She was also in the midst of her own health scare during the 2016 campaign, as she was filmed being dragged into a waiting SUV after a 9/11 ceremony, apparently as a result of pneumonia.

In contrast Harris is basically being forced, albeit she's clearly no Cincinnatus, into running for president. She will obviously have her own political history to defend, but it will be nothing like Clinton's Gordian Knot of unreformed neo-liberal-cum-decepticon dogshit that everyone who had so much as channel surfed past a news report in the preceding ten years could see was completely played out. Harris having a bonkers laugh and being prone monologuing like she's got a bonce full of pills probably comes off worse to cynical internet Goblins, like ourselves, than it does to normal freaks in the street. I think it's just as likely to come across as genuine, the same way George W. Bush's neverending concussion was misinterpreted as "folksy". It's basically like when Southgate took over the England job from Allerdice. It's not perfect, but it's been much, much worse.

Besides all that, this takes the attention away from that jammy, blond, cunt the Republicans are running. So what you got a knick on your ear? There is politics happening. It's not quite that simple, but it's at least an end to the free ride Donald Trump was getting post-shooting, while all Biden could do was mumble nonsense.

>>99718
Trevor Noah moved to the United States because his annoying personality and the prevalence of "necklacing" in South Africa made it suicidal to remain, fuck him. This is less me going to the mat for Harris and more just me hating that unfunny twat.

Regarding the better candidates that may or may not exist, you're probably right. However, I suspect it's all getting a bit The Death of Stalin over in Washington D.C., so it's probably a moot point even now.

>>99715
>But there's hindsight now. Everybody knows that all the bad predictions about Trump in office came true after he got elected.
And that's how Joe won in 2020. Yes he did, pipe down Marjorie. But part of the problem is that there weren't any particularly unexpected results in that election. Georgia has a lot of Black people, and they turned out to vote in huge numbers. Arizona has been purpling for some time due to Republicans getting demographicked, which is part of why the whole border thing is a hot issue there.

Donald Trump isn't a conservative, and I think many conservative voters know that. I think they also know just how bad an idea it is getting him back into power. But at the same time, things are now so polarised that those people are going to turn up on polling day and ask themselves if they can really stomach voting for, of all people, a Democrat? For some conservative factions, there's also the consideration of the bigger picture. Trump is a cunt, they know he's a cunt, but he's a cunt who's going to continue to deliver everything they ever wanted. Restrictions on abortion, gay people, Black people, etc., freedom of religion for them but not everyone else, lower taxes for them but not everyone else, generally lots of things that benefit them but not everyone else.

Labour's noises for the past couple of years had not really about getting people to vote for them, but simply getting Tory voters to desert the party. If anything ARE NIGE entering the ring was helpful because it meant many of those voters had somewhere to go when they found themselves in the polling station. Americans just don't have that option. For voters on the right, it's Red Or Dead, and I think that people who get annoyed at Blue No Matter Who maybe don't realise just how deep that goes.

>>99720
>Donald Trump isn't a conservative, and I think many conservative voters know that. I think they also know just how bad an idea it is getting him back into power.
Opinions from the mirror universe.

>>99721

Trump wasn't very political before he got into politics. You could make the point that his pro-business stance was always more in line with the Republicans. And that was probably true. But he wasn't a Republican. He was actually critical, in his own deranged way, of many policies of previous Republican Presidents, especially George W. Bush.

Trump once said that if he'd ever get into politics or seek election to a public office, he'd go with the Republicans, because he said something like they were the most gullible bunch in U.S. politics. In that sense, his heart wasn't ever in the Republican party. To him, they were probably more like useful idiots on his way to political power. An idea that you can't dismiss to this day.

>>99721
I often define the main difference between left- and right-wing politics as coming down to forgiveness versus morality. Conservatism is, fundamentally, all about morality. Kill the criminals, reward hard work, punish personal failings, encourage righteousness. In that way, it’s very anti-conservative indeed to be a fraudster who has been divorced multiple times and who openly admits to committing sex crimes and cheating the system for his own benefit wherever possible. I know all Republicans are secret gay paedophiles and people-traffickers, and in that respect Donald Trump isn’t that special, but textbook conservatism is very opposed to that sort of thing.

>>99722
>Trump wasn't very political before he got into politics.
And when I was eight months old I wasn't much into walking, but now I'm all about it. It's really irrelevant what kind of person Donald Trump was in 2003. He, for years, espoused bizarre conspiracies about Obama and first started running for president almost a decade ago. You genuinely sound like someone who fell asleep in December 2016 and hasn't checked a calendar since you woke up this morning.

Also the quote about him calling Republican voters dumb has been known to be an invention for years: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-republicans-dumbest-voters/

>>99723
Apologies, but your bespoke definition of conservatism isn't terribly important. Right-wing politics is about the accumulation of power and the oppression and exploitation of the working class, or whatever's replaced the working class in the western world in the 2020s. I listened to Rory Stewart express similar opinions on what conservatism really is on a Novara Media podcast a little while ago, and he sounded hopelessly naive. He seemingly ignored that right-wing administrations all around the world do the same thing every time: they push the envelope on civil restrictions and demolishing organised labour as far as they can, and even the slightest pushback is painted as barbaric anarchy that must be treated with zero respect or restraint. It's not always as severe in one country as it is in another. We had 14 years of Tory government and none of it was as ghastly as a month of living under Egypt's el-Sisi, and the party machine (actually it was the markets but whatever) removed Liz Truss, aka The White Javier Milei, in short order when she made a hash of literally everything. Regardless, all these people are the true faces of "conservatism".

Conservatism's social policies are largely, but not entirely, a stalking horse for their labour and economic policies. This is why Donald Trump's hardline christian nationalist adjascent politics could, albeit briefly, comfortably coexist with Boris Johnson's socially liberal, cosmopolitan, "small c" conservatism. Because when you get down to it conservatism is all about the money, baby. IE, your money, both in undervalued labour and wasted public funds.

Whatever, you know all this. Why are you arguing with me? Stop arguing with me!

>>99724
>your bespoke definition of conservatism isn't terribly important. >Right-wing politics is about the accumulation of power and the oppression and exploitation of the working class

Pot, kettle, etc.

>>99725
Well, no, because there are countless examples of what I describe in right-wing governments from here to Cathay. Whereas what you said is just a weird "no true Scotsman" thing about Trump. Stop acting like I'm attacking you as well, Christ. Everyone here's such a big baby.

>>99726
I’d just like to interject to say that I am >>99723 but I was not >>99725. I don’t fully agree with your response, because I was aiming for a definition that actual right-wing people might agree with, and they’re not going to agree with you. I didn’t bother posting that because while your definition is aggressive and controversial, there is some evidence to support it, just like saying left-wing people hate justice/white people/wealth. It’s a mad take, but the tweets that say precisely that from left-wing people who feel that way do indisputably exist. But I wasn’t being a baby. I’m a big boy. I did a pull-up at the weekend. I’m fucking rock.

>>99724
>He [...] first started running for president almost a decade ago
Some people have some awfully short memories. He was lined up for the Reform Party ticket in 2000, endorsed by their most high-profile and high-ranking elected official, Governor Jesse Ventura of Minnesota. The story goes that he dropped out after an endorsement from David Duke, but it didn't quite pan out that way. It was more a matter of being in the same party as David Duke, who was endorsing the party's eventual nominee Pat Buchanan. You know the whole thing about how "he probably doesn't mean half the extreme shit he says" but he really does mean it? Buchanan did it first.

They're now saying that Kamala Harris leads Trump 44 to 42 percent in the latest opinion polls which were conducted after Biden dropped out.

Seems like a bit of a race to the bottom, when neither cadidate can say they've got a majority of half the people willing to vote for them.

But if this gains momentum, who knows. With Biden now gone, it's no longer a contest between two geriatrics where neither of them should be President ever again.

>>99729
I don't believe it quite yet, because of course a poll like that is going to get reported in the news. It's so very newsworthy, because it's so very unexpected. But that being said, there are lots of voters supporting Anyone But Trump, and a fair few Anyone But Bidens, but who on Earth would describe their voting intentions as "Anyone But Kamala Harris"? She could well Starmer her way into a landslide victory.

Are there any rules about presidential debates? I thought Joe Biden could have saved his campaign by having another debate with Donald Trump and not crumbling to dust, but of course Donald Trump wouldn't want to bother with another debate because he had nothing more to gain and everything to lose. I think that's still the case; the next debate will be the man who won so hard he made the actual President quit, versus some woman who's been hiding in a cupboard for the past four years. Will Donald Trump be forced to take part in another debate?

Also, if Kamala Harris wins, that'll be three underwhelming presidents in a row. I looked up a list of all the presidents to see when America last had such an epic run of complete shitters, but it turns out it was only the 1970s (Nixon-Ford-Carter, in power from 1969-1981). If you like any of those, then it was probably Warren G "Regulate" Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, from 1921 to 1933.

>>99730

>Also, if Kamala Harris wins, that'll be three underwhelming presidents in a row.

I'm not disagreeing with you in principle, but have you honestly forgotten about George W. Bush? Or was that before your time?

>>99731
I remember him well, but he was only one. Before him came the popular Bill Clinton, and after him came the popular Barack Obama. In terms of consecutive bad presidents, his high score stops at 1. The late 19th century, meanwhile, had an almost endless string of unimpressive leaders, although I don't know enough about them to confidently assert whether or not Rutherford Hayes, Grover Cleveland, etc were any good.

>>99732

>I remember him well, but he was only one. Before him came the popular Bill Clinton, and after him came the popular Barack Obama. In terms of consecutive bad presidents, his high score stops at 1.

I've read those sentences three times but I still don't get what you are saying. Few pints last night?

What's deeply ironic is that Trump and his campaign have spent months, if not years, telling Biden that he wasn't up to the job anymore and needed to go. And now that he has actually left, at least the race for re-election, the Republicans are crying foul.

I actually watched some clips with Kamala Harris on youtube last night. I have to say I find her likeable. She is not like the cold, ruthless Hillary Clinton who came from self-proclaimed U.S. political royalty with a false sense of entitlement. There is some warmth there when Harris speaks. I'm looking forward to head-to-head debates between her and Trump, because as a prominent figure of the court system, she has probably spent decades standing her ground against big talking amoral fraudsters like Trump.

>>99733
>in a row
As in, sequentially. Three underwhelming presidents sequentially - Trump, Biden, Harris. Bush was bookended by (apparently) whelming presidents, Clinton and Obama, so didn't get a high score multiplier in this context.

>>99732
>>99734

I thought most people also thought Obama was shit and we wouldn't be in the position we are in today if it wasn't for the complete letdown of his eight years achieving literally nothing, reflected by the popular and surprisingly dry joke for American standards, "Thanks Obama!"

>>99735

Then name one President in living memory who wasn't a letdown.

You'd probably have to go all the way back to Kennedy, and probably to a lesser degree Johnson, who succeeded him. Richard Nixon was a criminal in office, who was pardoned by his Vice President and successor Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter is widely looked back on as mild mannered but ineffectual, and then you had Reagan who brought us an unprecedented arms race and capitalist market deregulation that still haunts the U.S. and global economy today. George Bush senior was a painfully bland corporate shill who invaded Iraq for cheap oil, as did his son George W., who wasn't bland but an intellectually challenged recovering alcoholic bumpkin, from a family where the smart one is called Jeb. And then Clinton was fucking his intern and God knows who else, although being married to Hillary, who can blame him.

The American people are like a lass with functional amnesia who keeps letting herself get shagged by one shit boyfriend after another, and will moan about it at length, but then goes on to meet somebody just like that all over again.

>>99733
SETI called, they said they'd developed a new bootlick detector to find life out in the universe but there's something on this forum that keeps throwing it off.

>>99736
Why is your definition of a letdown when a President isn't one of those once-in-a-thousand-years kind of leaders? And Kennedy was a let-down most famous for getting shot and nearly starting a nuclear war - this is a Theodore Roosevelt website.

>>99737

>And Kennedy was a let-down most famous for getting shot and nearly starting a nuclear war - this is a Theodore Roosevelt website.

Yeah, people should have taken notice when one of his campaign goals was to get offed halfway through his first term. You don't elect somebody like that.

Kennedy didn't nearly start a nuclear war. He actually refused to follow the advice of his hawkish military top brass who were urging him left and right to launch a preemptive strike against the Soviets. It stands to argue that a less level headed President in that situation would have given in. With all the consequences.

>>99738
>Yeah, people should have taken notice when one of his campaign goals was to get offed halfway through his first term. You don't elect somebody like that.
On the contrary I could have changed my vote a few times if certain politicians had promised that.

>>99738
You're forgetting that he also provoked the confrontation with the Bay of Pigs invasion - an operation that he launched yet also drastically scaled back in support and landing sites while afterwards. This being, to get into letdowns, a president explicitly elected as the new fresh face candidate against the establishment Nixon.

>>99740

The Bay of Pigs Invasion didn't just fail because of a lack of strength in numbers. It came just two years after the Cuban Revolution, which had very considerable support among the Cuban population, as did Castro's regime as a whole at the time. That was a big misjudgement within the Kennedy administration. The Cubans were never going to welcome as liberators a ragtag band of American soldiers and mercenaries on a small-scale covert mission to overthrow their government. It just wasn't like that. Granted, the Americans could have overrun Castro in a large-scale invasion, throwing sheer manpower and weaponry at them. But even then, it would have been both an unpopular war at home and would have risked Soviet involvement on Cuba's side, because one of the fist things that Castro and Guevara did after they took Havana was that they cosied up to the Russians, knowing full well that they needed a rival superpower's backing to survive as a small revolutionary island state that had just ousted its American-backed dictator.

>>99741
So Kennedy was double wrong - to both launch it and to scale it back. He also stoked the panic that forced his hand in the missile crisis, played it out for little reason when the Soviets wanted ineffective missiles out of Turkey. Let's not also forget that Kennedy ramped up Vietnam as an excuse to build capability in counter-insurgency.
https://archive.is/xod8p

>>99742

>when the Soviets wanted ineffective missiles out of Turkey.

That was one of the biggest acts of dishonesty, which still doesn't get due mention in many history books. That the Russians didn't just one day out of nowhere decide to put the U.S. in its crosshairs by installing nuclear missiles 90 miles from American shores. But that it was to try to set a counterbalance to the threat of dozens of Jupiter missiles in Turkey that were aimed straight at Moscow and other Russian cities and could have reached them in as little time as missiles from Cuba could have hit New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

>>99743

A lot like a certain little conflict going on today, really. You have to wonder, if the Ukrainians eventually win, will Putin just go "Alright fuck it, Cuban Missile Crisis 2."

It's even worse this time because there's no clash of ideologies. There's no grand capitalism versus socialism background clash to contextualise it. It's just pure lowest common denominator power and realpolitik.

>>99744

Wars and other dick waving contests of military might rarely happen without a reason. And that reason is seldom that some shrewd or unhinged leader simply gets too power hungry for their britches. A judgement of how justified those reasons are then needs to be made for every case. But it's always a good idea to be wary of any narrative where somebody is portrayed as attacking another country "unprovoked".

Take for example the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. We were all instructed to believe that Saddam Hussein was some kind of unstable rogue despot who just one day decided to invade a small neighbouring country to plunder its resources. What nobody was really telling you at the time is that that invasion was preceded by an entire chain of events that led up to it. What happened was that Iraq was heavily in debt to Western and Saudi banks. Iraq's ability to pay interest on its foreign loans greatly depended on its crude oil revenue, as one of the world's biggest oil producing countries at the time. Not least in an effort to weaken Iraq and tip regional geopolitics of the time in their favour, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates had unilaterally increased oil production earlier that year, which led to a sharp drop in the price for oil in commodity markets. Saddam Hussein addressed this in a very angered speech at OPEC (or was it the United Nations?) that summer just weeks before the invasion, threatening consequences and force if Kuwait and the Emirates weren't going to reduce oil production again. But nobody would listen, least of all those two countries.

https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/18/business/iraq-threatens-emirates-and-kuwait-on-oil-glut.html

With Ukraine, it's different. There was provocation against Putin, in the shape of the West and Nato over 30 years gradually turning nearly all former Soviet satellite states as well as some former Soviet territory like the Baltic states into Western and NATO allies. But another way of looking at it is that those countries freely decided to join Western alliances, which is more or less down to the fact that people in those countries deeply mistrusted Russia after the fall of communism. Of course, nobody likes losing an empire, but the idea of getting the old band back together took on a life of its own in Putin's head, to where he saw himself forced to draw a line in the sand with Ukraine. As one of the most resource rich countries of the entire former Communist Bloc, and one of Russia's oldest and most stable allies.

>>99745

Really what it comes down to is that the US And Friends (as Dan Carlin would call them which reminds me to check if he's done anything new since the last time I checked probably two years ago) could and should have played a much shrewder game in pacifying Russia, instead of just expecting them to just accept the conservativeolding. Because realistically, when were they going to?

The issue is the hawks in the US really have a pathological hatred of Russia, going back to genuine childhood trauma growing up in the most heated phases of the cold war in the 50s and 60s. They absolutely wanted to force Russia to accept the conservativeolding. It was never merely about gobbling up the eastern bloc from under Russia's nose, but explicitly humiliating them in doing so.

>>99746
Not to interrupt the rampant schizo-posting but I thought it was interesting how Poland didn't give the US a choice on the matter. They forced the issue during a presidential campaign and it was Clinton who ended up pushed into a corner, much like one of your Japanese comics. And it wasn't in the end even NATO expanding into Ukraine it was the EU talking trade.

Clearly there's something to be said of states being the tectonic plates of international relations but international society being the mantle.

>>99745
I always find this narrative that Russia has that NATO and the West turned the former Soviet and Warsaw states against them to be a bit like how Jimmy Savile used to say some in the media were trying to turn the public against him.

>>99748

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

>>99748

>turned the former Soviet and Warsaw states against them

Not really against them. But in a roundabout way, they did switch sides.

Looking back, you could make the argument that it would have been better to leave all the former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe as a kind of demilitarised zone where they would have been neither NATO members nor oriented towards Russia. It could have created a corridor throughout Europe where no side would have been able or allowed to exert military and political influence.

On the other hand, as history progressed, that would have left them defenceless against Russian aspirations, and it would have made it all too easy for Putin to reclaim countries like the Baltic states. After all, the Russians already invaded them once while the Soviet Union was in its death throes in 1990/91. And looking at the way Putin has exerted military and political force in a number of neighbouring countries like Georgia and Kazakhstan, there would have been no stopping him from doing the same in the Baltics, or even in places like Poland or the Czech Republic. But with those countries now firmly within NATO, there'd be no way for him to reclaim them without triggering WWIII.

Neutrality as a concept has its good points, but looking at eastern Europe in the last 30 years and especially now with the Ukraine invasion, it would not have saved any of the former Soviet satellite states from Russian influence. Nor would it have prevented icy relations between Russia and the West, because instead of Ukraine, Putin could have ended up invading countries like Poland, a direct neighbour to Germany as one of NATO's core member countries, with no worries about causing immediate global war.

In light of Putin's and Russia's aspirations the last few years, those countries are far better off being in NATO and the EU than they would be with the threat of a Russian reconquista under Putin constantly hanging over them.

And yet Israel is cool with Germany now. That really must say something about how horrible it is to border Russia.

It's so funny that the contest to become the Vice Presidential candidate for the Democrats is seeing who can bully J. D. Vance the hardest.

>>99786
What are they doing? With the Olympics, Israel/Gaza, and now the Southport Swiftie-stabber, I haven't seen any coverage of American politics for a few days.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/07/30/trump-vs-harris-2024-polls-harris-leads-trump-by-1-point-in-latest-survey/

>Vice President Kamala Harris has cut into former President Donald Trump’s advantage over President Joe Biden in the week since Biden dropped out of the race, according to polls—with the latest survey showing Harris leading Trump in a hypothetical matchup.

>Harris leads Trump by one point, 47% to 46%, with 4% of voters selecting “someone else” and 4% undecided, in Morning Consult’s weekly poll taken July 26-28, the second week in a row the poll has shown her leading Trump.

ITZ!!

DUMP THE TRUMP!!

>>99787
Vance is a historically unpopular VP nomination pick. Sources around the Trump campaign have copped to picking him being a kind of 5-1 up, 91st minute, Rabona'd attempt on goal, because that's how they felt the campaign was going when an ailing, senile, permanently sick Biden was the Dem's presidential candidate. Frankly, they weren't wrong. But then Biden is finally persauded to stand aside and the entire momentum and tone of the Democratic campaign has changed, they've gone completely on the offense, something Biden didn't seem willing or able to do, and part of that is highlighting how strange and out of step with mainstream US society men like J. D. Vance are. In particular Vance is being mocked for calling, in essence, any and all women who disagree with the fascistic leanings of the modern day Republicans "childless cat ladies" a couple of years ago. A governor by the name Andy Beshear made fun of him yesterday for referring to his childhood as an "origin story", and another governor called Tim Walz has launched an attack line of calling Republicans, Vance included, "weird". It might sound a bit daft, but it is actually putting the Republicans on the back foot, and it plays much better than the kind of Hilary 2016 campaign messaging of moralistic finger wagging.

Indeed, Biden's timing on dropping out might be, in hindsight, judged to have been perfect. That's not to say his weeks of arrogant foot-stomping and lying about being "uniquely qualified to beat Donald Trump" are forgiven; he deserves absolutely no credit for this timing, at all. However, Harris becoming the presidential nominee has had a few of effects that might not have happened if Biden had said in, for example, 2022 wouldn't be seeking reelection. One, there has been a champaign uncorking like release of energy for the Democrats. The relief that Biden's not running has massively boosted volunteer sign-ups and slashed third-party voting intentions. Two, it's meant that not only is unpopular Biden out of the spotlight and Harris is in it, but that a whole raft of popular, capable, state politicians are drawing attention as a result of the competition to become the VP nominee. That's what lead directly to the "they're weird" line from Tim Walz, which either wouldn't have happened or wouldn't have garnered the attention it did had Biden still been running. Two weeks ago Walz was stood outside the White House being, in effect, forced to declare that he supported Biden's campaign. He did so stoney faced and in an environment that felt more like made guys having to pledge loyality to a the don of the family, rather than a political campaign with a stated aim to "save democracy". Third, it completely took attention away from Trump's nick on the ear. Trump's political fortunes have often been ascribed, some might say blamed, on the amount of media attention he can get. The famous example being CNN broadcasting an empty podium Trump was due to speak at. Well, the Democrats springing back into life for the first time in two years has hampered that, which can only help them in defeating the Republicans.

I typed all this out before reading the above Forbes article that says basically the same thing, but in decent English, with actual figures and sources. Sorry.

>>99791
The Republicans were so completely unprepared for Biden dropping out. Also Harris was so hidden away by the Biden administration that they didn't have much prepared on her. That could change of course, but I sincerely believe they're having trouble figuring out how to do that in a way that isn't massively racist and/or misogynistic.

>>99792

>but I sincerely believe they're having trouble figuring out how to do that in a way that isn't massively racist and/or misogynistic

Hillary as a white woman was a much easier target in that respect. There was no race pitfall. And gender discrimination is, or in 2016 just wasn't seen as grave as racial discrimination.

What Clinton's campaign got wrong was its complete tone deafness to the fact that a critical number of Americans, while not necessarily a decisive majority, weren't on board with her whole diversity/inclusion/wokeness message. The Democrats got a false sense of confidence from preaching to the choir, in that they mistook the glowing support for the agenda among the young, East- and West Coast intellectual liberal elites for an election-winning majority.

If Harris as somebody who by her very ethnicity is even more about diversity than Hillary doesn't manage to tone that agenda down for a broader voter appeal, then she won't fare much better on election night than Hillary.

In the liberal social media sphere at the moment, including youtube, people are even more giddy than they were eight years ago and they're really counting their chickens before they've hatched. It's all well and good to put out videos and vlogs every single day with Trump's latest gaffes and failings. And you and your peers may agree with each other all day long that they make him impossible to vote for. Which I would agree he is.

But it's that kind of condescension and derision that is going to jeopardise a majority for Harris in the end. Because you'll never reach many of Trump's voters that way. You may call them dumb or misguided, but one thing dumb people really don't like is being talked down to.

Hillary was leading Trump sometimes by double digits in some of the polls right before the 2016 election, and look how it turned out. And with Kamala Harris so far leading by barely two percentage points, and Trump still being marginally ahead in some of the other polls, there is no reason at all for the Left to even remotely assume that it's all in the bag for them at this point.

If that two-percent lead in the polls (which is still within the margin of error) carries through to election night and beyond, then yes, there's hope that Harris will become President and not Trump again. Although Presidents often fail the popular vote but still gain enough electoral votes, let's not forget.

>>99794
You have literally no idea what you're talking about. Hilary's "diversity/inclusion/wokeness message"? She was pilloried for months regarding her "super predator" comments in the 1990s, she was one of the last prominent Dems to come out in favour of same-sex marriage and faced accusations of racism regarding how she had campaigned against Obama in their primary for the 2008 presidential nomination. Any socially liberal attitudes Hilary lay claim to came across as inauthentic as the rest of her hyper-orthodox D.C. worldview.

>If Harris as somebody who by her very ethnicity is even more about diversity than Hillary doesn't manage to tone that agenda down for a broader voter appeal, then she won't fare much better on election night than Hillary.
This was a horrible sentence to read. I think it need some more commas. Regardless, the idea Hilary didn't win because she was a woman was a myth perpetuated by her and her ineffectual staff to cover for the fact that they ran a terrible campaign against Trump.

>And you and your peers may agree with each other all day long
Do you think I have people stood behind me reading articles on The Econimst, New York Times, etc. along with me? Should I be concerned?

>You may call them dumb or misguided, but one thing dumb people really don't like is being talked down to.
What are you even talking about? Is this about the "they're weird" attack line? If so you're completely off the mark. The Democrats, for the first time in years, are fighting own their own terms against the Republicans. While it's very early days these more assertive and confident attacks are showing more cut through than anything Hilary managed.

>Hillary was leading Trump sometimes by double digits in some of the polls right before the 2016 election
As if. Maybe in some shite polls, but it was a 3-4% lead in any poll worth paying attention to, which was roughly their margin of error. It was also a lead that she blew because a lot of people stayed home and she famously didn't campaign in the Rust Belt, a region that enabled Trump's razor thin victory. Trump also had serious momentum going into polling day. While political momentum is a hard thing to define, it definitely exists and tends to lead an overperformance in results compared to prior polling. A good example from the UK would be the 2017 GE, where Corbyn's Labour overperformed and Theresa May's majority vanished, a result generally agreed to be something of a shock. Another UK example, this time to the detriment of a party, would be Starmer's lack of momentum going into June's GE, where Labour actually underperformed by several percentage points. They wound up with just shy of 34% of the vote, despite consistently polling at around 40% before the votes were counted. Right now, at the end of July, the Harris campaign clearly has momentum. They are landing attacks from multiple sources on a Republican party that doesn't know how to effectively fight back and it appears to be showing in the polls, which, and this can't be overstated, were in the fucking toilet when Biden was the nominee. Can this be maintained until November? I can't say, nor did I say earlier today. However, that is the situation in late July and it's one that gives the Dems a chance.

You've clearly brought a lot of idpol obsessive nonsense to this debate, along with talking about 2016 like it was several layers of sedimentary rock down, not eight years ago. You also seem to be trying to have a pop at me because I've claimed there's no way Trump can win, that it's in the bag for the Dems and they could pack up and go home now and still claim victory. Clearly, that's not even close to anything I said. The entire point of my earlier post was that something very significant has shifted within the Democratic party and that has given them a serious shot at winning the White House, whereas before all they had was a long march into an open grave.

This was probably a bit harsh, but I didn't care for your tone.

>>99795

>This was probably a bit harsh, but I didn't care for your tone.

You're the one who's coming off more than a tad pissy here.

>>99795
>cover for the fact that they ran a terrible campaign

SHE WENT ON ELLEN AND DABBED, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?

>>99796
What you need to understand that is that I really quite like being a bit of a prick. It's no effort and no bad thing to me. I'm not proud of it, but if someone insists on benig wrong at me it's going to come out.

>>99797
I can't believe the peons didn't Pokemon Go to the polls after seeing that; sexism? What other explanation could there be?

But in all seriousness, thinking about it for a moment that daft screen shot does encapsulate the idiocy of the Clinton 2016 campaign. She's ostensibly trying to appeal to 18-30 year olds on an afternoon talkshow that, presumably, very few of them gave a monkeys about. It's a slightly convovluted point I'm making, but I don't think she should ever be forgiven for handing over the USA to Donald Trump and his ilk and her continued centring by the Democrats is bizarre to me. Not that I think the British political scene is on the whole much better than the USA's, but generally if you're a massive fuck-up over here you get binned off, and definitely don't get carried around on a metaphorical litter for the rest of time like she has.

>>99798

>and her continued centring by the Democrats is bizarre to me.

I think you have forgotten who her husband is. She should have been on paper the safest of safest choices, one the public is already familiar with.

I'm not sure I accept the premise that it is her fault trump was president. You merely needed to have a cognitive brain at the time to understand why he was a terrible choice. I think the people who voted for trump largely did it to snub the people like me who tell them it is really fucking stupid just to hurt us. There is a highly cultivated culture of sneering at the intelligentsia and taking the contrarian position simply because it is contrarian in America and you play into that by taking a candidate that any balanced reporting of him sounds like hyperbole and therefore people are used to dismissing those kind of statements off hand.

>>99799
It's been said in this thread before. I don't think anyone on the right can legitimately say they didn't know who he was. There are just enough of them so deeply conditioned to vote straight-ticket Republican that they can't conceive of voting for anyone else. "He's not a great candidate, but what am I supposed to do instead, vote for a Democrat?"

>>99800

> "He's not a great candidate, but what am I supposed to do instead, vote for a Democrat?"

As a lifelong Tory voter, I can almost relate to that mindset.

The difference being that this time, I stayed home on election day and didn't vote for Sunak. Because I felt like I'd rather not vote at all than give that smug cunt my vote, or even vote Labour instead.

Trump is a liability for the Republican Party because a) he is still their only hope of winning this election and b) in the last few years, especially since his time out of the Presidential office, he has morally bankrupted and hollowed out the party in that he has wielded an enormous and undue amount of power from the shadows and that a large share not only of voters but also of the Republicans' inner circle are now conpiracy nuts and election deniers.

The only way to solve this is really Trump passing (I am decidedly not saying getting offed by another crazed gunman who's a better shot, but a death from natural causes and old age), or becoming so mentally incapacitated with dementia that he literally doesn't know his arse from his elbow. Because as it stands now, all this will not end with his defeat in the November elections. There's reason to believe that not winning will only make things a lot worse.

>>99802

> incapacitated with dementia that he literally doesn't know his arse from his elbow

We are already at that stage and people don't care. That's what the "4d chess" thing is about. When he dies something really incoherent it must just be we are too stupid to understand rather than he is retarded. If he came on stage and just dribbled and yelled trump for an hour people would call that a brilliant strategy for derailing his opponent.

>>99803

>We are already at that stage and people don't care.

His supporters probably don't, but Kamala Harris's presumptive candidacy is throwing a real wrench in Trump's campaign. Because now he's no longer running against somebody with even bigger signs of dementia, but somebody who at 59 is still in her prime with respect to holding a country's highest office. It's no longer a race to the bottom of who's the more (or less) ineffectual crazy old grandad.

If Trump's mental state hasn't bothered you so far and you're a true follower, then you probably won't be swayed by Harris one way or the other. But there are still plenty of voters, both registered Democrat and swing voters, whose reservations about voting for the Democratic Party in November were directly linked to Biden's frailty, and who could be mobilised by a well thought out campaign, and end up outnumbering Trump voters to the effect that Trump will actually lose this election by a clear margin.

>But there are still plenty of voters, both registered Democrat and swing voters, whose reservations about voting for the Democratic Party in November were directly linked to Biden's frailty

I honestly don't understand the mentality of anyone who witnessed a failed insurrection, and was still on the fence until now. "sure trump might have tried undermine the very foundation of our democracy but at least he isn't an old democrat". Fascists I can I identify as enemies not to be tolerated, but the idea that they could so nakedly display the threat they present and people forget 4 years later enough to be unsure of their position is beyond me.

>>99805

Murrikins, innit.

Attention span of a toddler with ADHD.

>>99805

The problem is that Trump has his followers brainwashed into believing his nonsense all the way. To them, he wasn't threatening democracy with his march on the Capitol, he was trying to restore it and take it back from the hands of the Democrats who had "stolen" the election and were playing silly buggers with it.

And thus, truth becomes what you and I believe, not what is objectively true.

Tragically, you'd think Britain has its share of downright stupid, uneducated and uninformed voters. Who believe all the shite some right-wing politicians tells them. But they can't hold a candle, both in numbers and in stupidity, to the kind of people that Trump has managed to gather as his following.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-polls-fake-kamala-harris-1934517

>Donald Trump Rails at 'Fake' Polls as Kamala Harris Overtakes Him

Ah, the mirth. Trump didn't seem to have any complaints while the polls were still - narrowly - favouring him.

My prediction is that some sort of audio or other evidence will surface where Trump will personally call and try to blackmail some of the pollsters and ask them to doctor the numbers for him. Just like he did with the 2020 election results in Georgia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_phone_call

>At one point on the call, Trump told Raffensperger, "What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state."During the call, Trump falsely suggested that Raffensperger could have committed a criminal offense by refusing to overturn the state's election results. Legal experts have suggested that Trump's behavior and demands could have violated state and federal laws.

https://apnews.com/live/trump-harris-vp-pick-election-updates

>Election 2024 live updates: Harris picks Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, AP sources say

>The 60-year-old Democrat rose to the forefront with a series of plain-spoken television appearances in the days after President Joe Biden decided not to seek a second term. He has made his state a bastion of liberal policy and, this year, one of the few states to protect fans buying tickets online for Taylor Swift concerts and other live events.


Swifties for the win!

I can't wait to watch that sack of wretched shit lose so fucking hard in November. Old cunt's got nothing left. Frankly, now he's basically gotten away with all his crimes or already been found guilty, his heart's probably not in it the same way it was when he thought his own arse was on the line.

>>99810

It's a gamble to put another old white man in the running. Probably would've been better to pick somebody young and energetic. Not a Dick Cheney lookalike.

It could backfire and cost her the narrow lead she currently has over Trimp, because it'll be difficult to sell another crusty ol' white guy to women and ethnic minorities who were initially enthusiastic about the prospect of her candidacy. There's no point trying to win over the old white guy vote from Trump, because it's quite firmly in his camp.

>>99811
>It's a gamble to put another old white man in the running. Probably would've been better to pick somebody young and energetic. Not a Dick Cheney lookalike.
It's no gamble to make Walz VP. He might be old enough for a Scottish bus pass at sixty, but that's only a year older than Harris, he's plenty energetic and one of the best communicators the Democrats have. He has so little in common with Dick Cheney you would need the James Webb telescope to find even the faint impression of such a thing.

>It could backfire and cost her the narrow lead she currently has over Trimp... *abridged to a long procession of fart noises for brevity's sake*
Okay, you have no idea what you're talking about and are more obsessed with identity politics than the Americans are. It's not about "trying to win crusty old white guys". Walz is a popular governor who has consistantly out-performed the Democrat's national fortunes, the idea that he would suppress the Democratic vote now he's on a national ticket makes no sense. To borrow a quote made by the Democratic speaker of Minnesota’s house of representatives to The Guardian "He is a cheerful person, he’s a positive, upbeat person, he’s charismatic. He can get a crowd going". That's in part personality and that he doesn't speak like a lawyer. The latter is because he's a rare thing in elite level Democrat politics, he's literally anything other than a trained lawyer. He seemingly lacks any deeply immiserating political record and boasts several state-level policies that do the opposite: "universal school meals, legalized marijuana, abortion protections and gun control measures." All that is widely popular in the US, inspite of Republicans ceaselessly trying to paint such measures as the first step on the road to Bolshevism.

>>99811
He's a fairly vanilla pick, so is mostly there because he's white and male. Politically, he doesn't bring much breadth to the ticket, ticking the standard boxes for Democrats, but he offsets the top of the ticket being a mixed Black/South Asian woman, and when you're up against Criminal-Weirdo, Normal-Normal seems like not a bad bet.

You really have to be truly committed to the kayfabe to talk about it like this.

>>99813

>mostly there because he's white and male

So they could have picked anyone from Bill Nye Science Guy to Marshall Mathers aka the Real Slim Shady, as far as you are concerned, right? Pillock.

But even this is giving the entire sham too much credulence.

>>99814
The absolute state of this post. Have a word with yourself, lad.