2024 US Presidential Election Thread

[Exorcet]

I don't see it that way. Are Democrats better than Republicans overall? Yes. Do I think Democrats are good for the country? No. What I care about is researching and voting for the person I think would do the best job, not who's the least worst. It's how I think people should approach the election (although they are free to do what they want of course since voting is free speech). If I'm unable to find someone that I think is the best for the job, I just don't vote for that office. I don't want to vote for someone that doesn't align with my ideology. So as of right now, my personal choice is a third party or apathy.

The ballot asks us which candidate we want, but what people are actually voting for is the future trajectory of the nation. The current system is very flawed so we can't vote for what we want directly, even if there are good candidates, but we still have the ability to steer the US in one direction or another.

The issue with this election is that one path is very much worse than the alternatives and it's worth avoiding that path even if you can't immediately get to where you would ideally go. The win case for 2024 is telling the Republicans that they ruined themselves and then letting them collapse or reform. Either of those results are only going to push the US closer to the reform it needs. Predicting exactly what will happen is impossible, but I think it's safe to say that keeping Trump out of office is by far the safer bet. I think it's also fair to say that while gloom and doom has been predicted before, Trump set himself apart by damaging the country in ways that no one else has. We can't use hindsight here, it doesn't apply.

As far as third parties go, they should be supported but is voting for them enough? Giving them some of the vote at least helps them stay relevant enough to keep running, but if they only keep getting token support, is that really going to sway other voters to cast in their favor? I think they need more than just votes. Disrupting the current party balance by making the Republicans irrelevant may actually be one of the best ways to help third parties make real progress.

 

[Liquid]

The voting system in the USA doesn't enable you to vote on your principles even if that's what every fibre of your being commands you to do. And the current election has reached critical mass.

You don't have to like it but it's hold your nose time and choose the lesser of two evils. You might never have an election again.

 

[Famine]

SCOTUS rules 9-0 that only Congress can enforce 14A.

US Supreme Court rules Colorado cannot ban Trump from presidential ballot

The ruling says only Congress can bar a candidate by invoking the insurrection clause in the Constitution.

www.bbc.co.uk

I'm not OK with Trump, that's why I'm not voting for him.

If you don't care enough about the possibility of him coming back that you can't bring yourself to place a vote for the one person capable of preventing that, you are okay with it if a sufficient number of other people vote for him but not enough people (in enough of the right places; again, he lost both popular votes by millions) vote for the other guy...

Your justification is you don't want to vote for that person because he old/fell up some steps/eats ice cream wrong (apparently)/might die in office like all the Trump supporters said last time/doesn't have a sufficient number of policies you like. The choice, and what 97-99% of those who vote will choose, is a man who, if he ever wiped his own arse, would do it with the Constitution vs. a boring fart whose administration is capturing more people trying to illegally cross the border (which is a good thing, if illegal immigration is an election issue for you, but for some reason is presented as a bad thing). One of those two will win, and you're sufficiently okay with that outcome that your preference is to either not vote or vote for a third party.


Plenty of people say weird **** like "how could the Germans have allowed someone like Hitler into power? If only they could go back in time and stop him" all the time. Well, this is the chance. You caught a break in 2020 (hey, the people who said to vote D turned out to be right, and all the doommongers who said they were both bad choices and Biden might die in office turned out to be wrong... imagine); you got to see four years of him and what he already did and is willing to do, and now he's promising to do more of it.

Lest we forget that the last thing he actually did was instigate a riot - which his lackeys enabled (with the whole attacking weak points, alarms disabled, insufficient police response, live-tweeting the location of Pelosi, and so on) - and he's promising much, much more than that now.

What's the point for you at which "this guy is so dangerous to the future of my nation" becomes a nose-hold vote for someone you regard as milquetoast to stop him, and why isn't this it?

 

[Danoff]

Because I'm saying, that a DA looking to make a name for themselves or who has a vendetta will use stupid arguments to charge the president.

I have no idea why you think this would somehow create a problem worth worrying about, or why it can't be addressed on its own. Certainly we don't need to let the president have very serious complete immunity to the law to handle this not-very-serious issue. It's a very non-libertarian position to be saying that the president needs to be above the law.

What needs to be done is for Congress to follow the Constitution and actually uphold the way impeachments and removals are done. Trump should've been removed after he was impeached the second time.

There is a political process for holding the president politically accountable (impeachment), and there is also a legal process for holding citizens legally accountable for crimes (court). We don't need to give cops (qualified immunity) or the president (unqualified immunity) supercitizen status for them to do their jobs. Putting the president above the law breaks the country, and you should see that clearly.

Could that happen? Yes. Is it very likely? I still don't believe so.

Trump is saying the quiet part out loud here and for some reason you don't hear it. One of Trump's greatest strengths throughout all of this is people not taking him at his word. And it's STILL happening... unbelievable.

I came into this thread today thinking... Trump has finally gone over the line. His lawyers are arguing in court that he should be allowed to murder political opponents. Joey will have to see that ice cream grandpa is far better than that. Somehow you're not.

First thing's first. Trump needs to be kept out. And no, I don't think anyone Trump might pick as VP is somehow more dangerous. They don't have his track record.

 

[Imari]

Soldiers are going to have a hard time killing Americans.

Soldiers can be die hard MAGA enthusiasts too. People like Michael Flynn exist. Most soldiers are going to have a hard time killing Americans, as they should, but it only takes a handful.

It doesn't even have to be soldiers. Trump could just form his own little paramilitary group of armed goons, nominally for his own protection of course. He could call them the "Protection Squadron", and everything they do is for the continued protection of His Trumpiness. They could go around removing people who are deemed a threat or a nuisance.

 

[eran0004]

@Joey D this is Trump arguing in court that he can deploy the US military against the US government and that the only recourse is impeachment, a proceeding which he can target with the US military.

It also means that all you need to “overrule” the constitution as POTUS is 1/3 of the votes in the senate, since 2/3 are required for a conviction. So out of 535 members of Congress, all you need is the support of 34 senators and then you can safely ignore the constitution.

 

[UKMikey]

Trump could just form his own little paramilitary group of armed goons, nominally for his own protection of course. He could call them the "Protection Squadron", and everything they do is for the continued protection of His Trumpiness. They could go around removing people who are deemed a threat or a nuisance.

I see what you did there. He'd probably be calling upon them quite waffen, whoops I mean "often".

 

[p78]

Even tho i am reading threads like this one and the America thread.
As a European i cannot fathom why you would still vote for Trump.
Is the US media that biased that you don't get to see what us Europeans see in the news?

I get that Biden may not be a prime candidate but even with al his shortcommings he's still miles better then Trump will ever be.

 

[TheHun99]

Even tho i am reading threads like this one and the America thread.
As a European i cannot fathom why you would still vote for Trump.
Is the US media that biased that you don't get to see what us Europeans see in the news?

I get that Biden may not be a prime candidate but even with al his shortcommings he's still miles better then Trump will ever be.

I'm dual American-Hungarian citizen and just like I can't fathom why people would vote for Trump, the same applies to my original home, Hungary. I don't understand why people vote for Orban, either. I guess people are simply idiots. The area where we live is decidedly democrat-leaning, like 60%+ but I can still see quite a few cars, mainly pickups with "Trump is my president" and the like. The US media may be biased but it's your choice what you read or watch. Trump-believers watch Fox, OANN, Newsmax etc., outlets that willingly feed them the lies that Trump wants them to hear, same in Hungary (although there the government has a clear advantage to push their agenda).

Unless we could have an "Ark of Truth" like in the similarly named Stargate SG-1 movie, I don't know how those believers could be swayed. I mean the orange duck has raped women, yet a ton of women are supporting him, and let's not even talk about abortion, presidential immunity etc. Honestly, it's like religion already, or rather a cult, simple as that.

 

[Danoff]

Honestly, it's like religion already, or rather a cult, simple as that.

Yes I think religion/cult is apt, because Trump uses a lot of the same kind of mental traps that religions and cults use. It is possible that a good percentage of these people cannot be brought around under any circumstances. Luckily we don't have to bring them all around to prevent a lot of damage.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I went to the cinema last night (to see Dune 2), got a trailer for 'Civil War', which I'd not heard of. Seems somewhat, on the nose, right now? The audience responded with a lot of comments among themselves in a way they didn't for the other trailers.

 

[Danoff]

I went to the cinema last night (to see Dune 2), got a trailer for 'Civil War', which I'd not heard of. Seems somewhat, on the nose, right now? The audience responded with a lot of comments among themselves in a way they didn't for the other trailers.

Did the same, and had the same kind of feeling. Too close to home right now.

 

[Sprite]

Even tho i am reading threads like this one and the America thread.
As a European i cannot fathom why you would still vote for Trump.
Is the US media that biased that you don't get to see what us Europeans see in the news?

I get that Biden may not be a prime candidate but even with al his shortcommings he's still miles better then Trump will ever be.

I thought the exact same thing when the UK was voting for BREXIT. I couldn’t fathom why you’d vote to leave the EU but here we are, reaping the benefits (sarcasm).

I went to the cinema last night (to see Dune 2), got a trailer for 'Civil War', which I'd not heard of. Seems somewhat, on the nose, right now? The audience responded with a lot of comments among themselves in a way they didn't for the other trailers.

The wife and I did exactly the same last Friday. The audience had the same reaction too. Lots of muttering.

 

[UKMikey]

I went to the cinema last night (to see Dune 2), got a trailer for 'Civil War', which I'd not heard of. Seems somewhat, on the nose, right now? The audience responded with a lot of comments among themselves in a way they didn't for the other trailers.

Maybe like me they were wondering how Texas and California ended up on the same side in the movie.

 

[Blitz24]

I went to the cinema last night (to see Dune 2), got a trailer for 'Civil War', which I'd not heard of. Seems somewhat, on the nose, right now? The audience responded with a lot of comments among themselves in a way they didn't for the other trailers.

Extremely unnerving when I saw it back in January. I don't want to see it again.

 

[Famine]

Civil War

Not an Avengers flick?

I recently stumbled down an alt-right activist movie hole through a guest star in a House episode I semi-recognised. Her IMDB page had a trailer for some film she was in, which turned out to be a - and I use the term loosely - Kevin Sorbo vehicle. That led to his IMDB page and wow has he - and again I use the term loosely - starred in some absolute barrel-scrapers over the past few years...

My favourite is "One Nation Under God", a film so weak that it has no Wikipedia page, and which only has the official blurb of "A student boldly stands up for God when a Presidential candidate visits his school. The exchange goes viral challenging both to step out in faith and be the men that God has called them to be."; the film's website (oh my word) states "Our founding fathers placed God at the center of our country," (which... what?) "but today, it has become our greatest battle to keep Him there. [ONUG] shares the story of a hispanic student from an immigrant family that boldly steps out to protect his first amendment right in his school and challenges the lead candidate for the Presidency of the United States to do the same. Together, they take a stand for what they believe."

It stars such thespianic titans as The Soldier Guy from Starship Troopers, The Son of the Crap Belushi Brother, Various Disney Channel Series Boy, and Literally Herschel Walker. No, seriously, Herschel Walker is in it.

I thought the exact same thing when the UK was voting for BREXIT. I couldn’t fathom why you’d vote to leave the EU but here we are, reaping the benefits (sarcasm).

Like Trump, I could understand people voting for it the first time; there was dissatisfaction with the known path and a potential but unknown alternative that could shake things up. Despite the obvious lies and continued "gaffes", it appealed to people who no longer wanted things to continue as they were. Of course Brexit was a straight referendum and the plurality won - while Trump lost the vote but won the right places to win.

Also like Trump, I can't grasp how people have seen four years of it and would vote for it again - but by the looks of it, we learned from the experience and the USA didn't.

Doing it a third time is baffling.

 

[Danoff]

The supreme court just finished oral arguments about Donald Trump's candidacy for 2024, and they appear to be set to rule unanimously or nearly-unanimously that Colorado cannot remove Trump from the ballot under the 14th amendment. In doing so, I believe the court is answering the wrong question. They appear to be asking whether a state has the authority to independently decide whether a candidate is eligible under the 14th amendment - as though the state can make this determination for themselves independently of any other state. As thought it is a state's right to make this determination, and this determination affects them and only them. This of course seems silly and unworkable as every state might come to a different conclusion, and a national election would be rendered impossible or unworkable.

In actuality the state of colorado appears to me to be attempting to perform its duty to interpret the constitution faithfully, just as it would in any other case. Rather than being asked whether colorado can make this determination independently, the supreme court is being asked whether colorado has interpreted the constitution correctly. Each state must constantly attempt to interpret the constitution correctly, and when it does not, the supreme court is asked to set the record straight. The question to the supreme court then is not whether colorado can interpret the 14th amendment, in fact it has a duty to interpret all constitutional amendments. The question at hand is whether it has done so correctly. That question appears to be completely absent from the supreme court's consideration of its case, and in the process, I believe they have absent-mindedly shirked their responsibilities to the nation.

They appear to be poised to leave us without the protections of the 14th amendment, tearing a hole in the constitution, and ignoring a amendment that was hard-earned.

All of the above appears to be accurate. The majority and concurring opinions in this case don't seem to shed a lot of light on any other path other than a path that is largely duplicative of impeachment.

Silver linings, the court opinion tacitly affirms that the 14th amendment applies at least in theory to the president, and the concurring opinion basically implies that it would apply to barring Trump himself, at least in theory.

 

[HenrySwanson]

@Joey D

I think you have to understand that your vote is critical in this race. I made the stupid decision to vote for Brexit in 2016. That election turned out to be very close, where every vote mattered. If I could go back and tell stupid me to vote for the right side, I'd jump in that time machine 10 times out of 10.

What I see with this election's stakes is something more momentous and damaging - not just for the US but for the world.

In short, don't make the same mistakes I did.

 

[Blitz24]

It appears that Haley has dropped out of the race but this news is unconfirmed.

 

[eran0004]

All of the above appears to be accurate. The majority and concurring opinions in this case don't seem to shed a lot of light on any other path other than a path that is largely duplicative of impeachment.

Silver linings, the court opinion tacitly affirms that the 14th amendment applies at least in theory to the president, and the concurring opinion basically implies that it would apply to barring Trump himself, at least in theory.

Doss that mean that crimes against the constitution can only be tried through impeachment in Congress? It can’t be tried in court?

 

[p78]

So it's gonna be another Biden vs Trump then.
Have no clue how that is gonna turn out.

 

[Famine]

So it's gonna be another Biden vs Trump then.
Have no clue how that is gonna turn out.

The fact 45 got the second-largest number of votes in US Presidential Election history last time out was mind-boggling.

Four years of trampling on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, the selling out to the old enemy Russia (and China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia [from where most of the 9/11 perpetrators came]) and an absolute deterioration of relations and the perception of the USA as a serious country and ally overseas should all have been utter poison to a Republican, but 74 million of them just kept on gulping it down.

And then he tried everything, running roughshod (but nappyclad) over the remaining bits of the BOR to stay in power, whipping the dimmest up into a straight-up assault on the Capitol to prevent the certification of the results.

Now we have people who are hesitating after the boring status quo of the last four years - which has repaired much of those relations at least in terms of the Presidency, even if we've all watched, stunned, while the judiciary walks back protections for women and the GOP, fronted by rapists, sex offenders, and one straight up triploid howler monkey, has torn itself to shreds in an internal but very public power struggle - because focus has been allowed to fall on some issues now we're not watching in stunned bemusement as a ****ing lunatic barfs nonsense out of his insane face like a ****-smeared whoopie cushion, and thinking that being old or soft on Israel/illegal immigration*/climate change isn't a good enough reason to keep 45 as far away from the Oval Office as possible.


45 has a guaranteed 60m+ voters. The difference between winning a state and not is less, in every state, than the number of non-votes - and in two, last time out, it was less than the number of third-party votes.

2024 is not the time for a third-party to make ground, and a potential victory for a Presidential candidate who has outright stated a desire to be a dictator and who tried to have voting against him fraudulently disregarded in several states last time round may well mean that unless you vote to keep him out this time there won't be another election for you to vote how you truly want to.

*Again, if this is your hot-button issue, how is arresting more illegals at the border worse?

 

[Blitz24]

The question pretty much will become if all "RINOS" (according to Trump) and all of those disaffected Democrats will truly vote 3rd party. If they don't, Trump is going to lose the election and I can't realistically see a scenario where he will be on the ballot in 2028. If they do, then the Democrats once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

 

[McLaren]

It appears that Haley has dropped out of the race but this news is unconfirmed.

Didn’t she just beat him in another state besides D.C.? Shame. You know that eats at him.

 

[Blitz24]

Didn’t she just beat him in another state besides D.C.? Shame. You know that eats at him.

She won in Vermont. The problem is she will be mathematically eliminated next week if she doesn't get a landslide victory. In this environment, she will not get that victory.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

She won in Vermont. The problem is she will be mathematically eliminated next week if she doesn't get a landslide victory. In this environment, she will not get that victory.

She has already dropped out. I naively expected a better showing before the primary began, but in reality the GOP has changed so much and driven out so many moderates, that he's really the only one capable of winning the Republican nomination. This is a radically different party than it was when Bush was president. It's disheartening to see a career con man being so successful at manipulating people.

My big question is still....what are Haley's voters going to do in the GE? While her roughly 25% (average per state) is not a significant challenge to Trump in the primary, that amount of GOP voters seem fairly committed to voting for not Trump, period. It's one thing to sit home and not bother with the primary if you don't like the candidate who is definitely going to win, its quite another to actively go out and vote against him knowing it's futile. If 2024 turnout is anything like 2020 turnout, Trump simply cannot win if 25% of the GOP won't vote for him, even with the ridiculous electoral college advantages the GOP has.

 

[GranTurNismo]

I'm slightly surprised Haley dropped out as early as she did, as she seemed adamant on staying in the race as long as possible. Perhaps that billionaire money dried out earlier than expected?

While her chances of ever being the party's nominee were doomed from the day Trump announced his candidacy (let alone when Trump handily won Iowa), I actually think it's commendable she insisted on staying in the race, for the simple reason of further demonstrating how unelectable Trump is. Even in spite of not having any path to victory, she managed to pull off 20-30% of the vote in several states. That's 20-30% of Republican voters who by-and-large will not vote for Trump under any circumstances. These numbers are simply devastating for Trump's re-election chances and I'm sure his campaign is very wary of this.

That being said, it is noteworthy that Haley's coverage by legacy media was mostly very favorable. All this talk of Haley actually having a chance, giving reasons why she should stay in the race, calling her "brave" or "maverick" or implying that she is moderate is not only a farce, but only furthers the MAGA narrative that "the media" is jumping at the chance to cover for anyone except Trump, making him the "lone wolf". Haley is not a moderate, plain and simple, just likely nearly every other elected official in the GOP. While her optics and rhetoric were undeniably less far-right and off-putting than Trump, she loses all credibility as a moderate candidate by talking about "wokeness", supporting restrictions on LGBT freedoms and abortion, and a further deregulated and crony-capitalist favorable economy, among other things. Haley and Trump really don't differ very much at all when it comes to key policies. If not openly supporting the end of democracy is enough to classify Haley as a "moderate", it really does show how far deep the GOP is in MAGA extremism.

I'll also add that Haley had the best chance of beating Biden in a general election. In fact, given Biden's abysmal approval rating and further falling out of favor with Arab and younger Americans by going all in on supporting Israel's genocide in Gaza, there is a relatively good chance that Haley would beat Biden. She, in spite of angering the MAGA base, would be the most capable of picking up independent voters, as well as moderate suburban Democrats who voted for Biden in 2020 yet Bush, McCain, and Romney in years past. Trump fails massively in this regard. Haley doesn't have any real baggage as far as being a corrupt, immoral, or unfit candidate like Trump does. There are voters who may not be particularly politically engaged but would love to see the first female president, and/or someone who isn't an octogenerian, and may be willing to make ideological sacrifices in order to make this happen. It's also worth noting that a sizable chunk of Trump's base- older, white, evangelical homeowners, are the most reliable voting bloc in the country and would likely still vote for Haley even though she isn't the lord-and-savior Trump. I'm sure all of this must make the Republican Party furious, in that they could theoretically pull off a victory in 2024 yet can't, all due to Trump. This all demonstrates how different that primary voters are from general election voters to begin with.

 

[UKMikey]

The GOP have a sure fire strategy for attracting non-aligned and college voters.

 

[Blitz24]

I can't handle their truth.

 

[TexRex]

lol. lmao.

They're just broken, huh?