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Is keeping Donald Trump in the 2024 US election beneficial to Democrats?
Yes, Trump has a real chance of winning in 2024 and that would be dangerous for the world in many ways.
On the other hand Trump seems like the easiest candidate for the presumptive nominee President Biden to beat.
- A lot of Americans are rightly scared shitless of Trump and will turn out to vote against him.
- Trump is likely to try to dodge debates which benefits Biden, who has a stuttering problem and a gaffe problem.
- Trump is elderly, like Biden so that somewhat neutralizes the age issue for Biden.
If Trump was removed from the election DeSantis might become the front runner or nominee
- He is young, and the age issue would be on Biden again
- He might have the debates Trump would have eschewed and do well in them
- DeSantis would likely pick up Trump's base in that situation
The worst scenario with Trump being removed from the election would if someone other than DeSantis became the nominee
- Again, the age issue would be a thing for Biden again
- The unknown nominee could be a better debater than Biden
- The unknown candidate would have neither Trump's nor DeSantis's baggage, causing more voters to stay home or swing voters picking him/her over Biden
Edit:
To clarify, I mean what would happen if Trump was kept entirely out of 2024 - no 3rd party runs, no vote splitting.
This type of strategising is exactly what cost the 2016 elections.
Wishing for Trump to be in the running because it’ll split the vote or whatever is just … kind of dumb, honestly. How about strategising against a candidate that won’t split the vote? Eg if you’re worried about DeSantis then talk about how to address his platform as a whole. Not how to split the vote.
What? The 2016 election was lost because the system gives more weight to a handful of purple states and for complex reasons Trump won the ~80k votes in 3 states needed to outweigh the 2.9M votes he lost by.
This type of strategising is what won the 2016 elections for the GOP. The Manafort-orchestrated sharing of voter data with Russia and targeted campaigns to attract the key voters or persuade unhappy leftists to sit out. The choice of a VP who courted religious conservatives, who by the end of his term had Trump's base wanting him hanged. The pressure put on the FBI to release the "October surprise" Clinton email announcement, and the slow-dripped WikiLeaks Podesta emails which included the Pied Piper Strategy.
You can't separate strategizing from politics. Politics is inherently strategic, and spoilers can work. I know you're not a USian but can you take a guess at what percent of people were in favor of the Afford Care Act but not Obama Care, when they were the same thing? It's ridiculous that works, but that's politics.
While everything you mention is very much a part of Trump's victory, I sincerely believe that almost any candidate from either side in the last 50 years could've defeated Trump even so, and it took a very concerted effort from the DNC and Clinton's team to throw a sure thing.
The modern democratic party is mostly pile of elitist institutionalists who are almost perfectly hard countered by trump's brand of crazy. Biden/Harris is almost a tailor made team that could lose to trump, and yet it's what they wanted/the best they could do (there are better candidates who ran, but not who were supported by the democrat machine).
I really feel like modern politics is watching two sports teams who have absolutely out of shape and have no fundamentals. The dem's are just following the "well this is what best team X did" rule book and the reps have found one super dumb but effective strategy because no one would have tried it vs a competent team, so the dem's have no idea/desire to deal with it because "well that's not what best team x did"
In short, it's very strategic. This is a really really dumb strategy being beaten by an even dumber, but very effective against it specifically, strategy.
I feel Republicans just have the simpler to understand platform. Their voters are hardcore about guns, abortion, immigration. Democrats are the party of “Not Republican” and that is such a broad brush that they can’t market it. Granted, it seems that Republicans have also adopted the “Not Biden” platform of doing the opposite of Biden regardless of whether it aligns with their self interest or not.
That's a very broad brush.
Reality is there are several levels of both parties. Ranging from MAGA Republicans to Sanders Democrats.... And then some.
The problem really lies in the republicans as a whole have no issue distorting, obstructing, and even outright lying to get votes from the uneducated and hive minded voters, on a a platform that appeals to those uneducated as a farce to what they actually do.
Democrats can't agree on a platform as a whole.
As a general rule, the republican voter doesn't recognize or acknowledge the nuance of politics at all. It's just a frothing at the mouth, "At least I'm not a Democrat"
Where as democratic voters tend to be more educated, and have an educated opinion on nuanced matters, that may conflict with candidates, and therefore they get questioned.
Democrats essentially hamstring themselves by not forming a unified platform, and backing "The old guard" as a default.
Throw in green party voters and the ridiculous electoral process, left leaning voters are essentially having to beat all odds to keep office.
This is straying dangerously close to the liberal elitism that has caused many problems for the democrats. :)
How many times do we have to watch republican voters explicitly vote against their better interests before it becomes ok to call them out on it? At this point, saying they don't understand what they're doing is actually the generous explanation of their behavior. Because they only alternative is that they are so invested in the hateful rhetoric of the rights culture war that they are willing to make their lives objectively worse in order to further the cause. Is that really a better explanation?
Your willingness to assume you understand them so well as to know what exactly their interests are, what priorities they have among said interests, and how to achieve them, while insisting they're essentially too dumb to take care of themselves, is not a winning set of features.
I don't assume I know almost any of those things. But like most things, there are experts on all of them. And the experts all pretty much agree. Though things aren't perfect anywhere, by nearly any objective measure citizens in blue areas of the country are better off than red areas.
I am pretty sure about that last thing. I do think they're too dumb to take are of themselves. They've proven that to me time and time again.
I think you're missing what I was driving at. Because that isn't what I was saying. Not even close. I live im a red area of one of the reddest states in the country, so I'm not saying that we should abandon people in red states. I'm not even saying that we should abandon the people voting against their better interests. In fact I'm saying the opposite.
It isn't that I don't care about their problems, and it isn't that I think they have different problems than I do. think we should pass the kinds of laws that help everyone. There are no shortage of laws that could pass that be universally helpfully and no shortage of evidence to support them. It's that they're the ones standing in the way of passing those laws. I don't give a shit when people have different values and opinions than me, but the problem arises when one side of a disagreement is just objectively incorrect.
I don't look down on others for their problems, because we all have the problems and a lot of the same problems. But I am tired of pretending I don't look down on people actively standing in the way of solving those problems.
It's not elitism to question your representatives motives.
And it's been shown that happens more with an educated constituency.
That’s what I’m saying. There are varying levels of both parties but the Republicans still have those core party platform points that they can fall back on.
Repeating their policies on guns, abortion, and immigration is all that they need to do when they start to lose their base on whether to allow free trade or slap tariffs on everything to make American factories great again.
What do Democrats have as their core tenets? Climate policy? An extremely general ”not being a dick to LGBT+ community”? This issue alone is a spectrum, some Dem voters take issue with making Trans people second class citizens but also might not want their grade schooler thinking about those issue yet. As you said, many Democratic issues come with a large level of nuance, as simply being the opposite of Republicans leaves a lot of spectrum on where to stand.
So that is how it is, but not how it has to be. I've seen for example articles about really impressive things one of the midwestern governors (Minnesota I think but might be a different state from the region) has accomplished in the last five years. Dems should be publicizing their victories and promoting members of their bench to get a solid group of possible candidates ready for upcoming nationwide elections. I don't see that happening right now and I hate it. Partly we have lost the regional newspapers who used to build that kind of publicity with a lot less effort but that is precisely why the party should take responsibility to do it as well as the politician's staff themselves.
I'll agree that 2016 was a sure thing - for the Republicans.
A president sits for two periods, then the other party takes over, that's the pattern. I believe any Republican candidate would have beaten any Democratic candidate in that election, and the fact that Trump came so close to losing (and somehow managed to lose his re-election!) proves how extremely weak of a candidate he is. I wasn't surprised in 2016, and I'm not particularly worried about 2024.
I know, but it doesn't mean americans have to root for it.
My only issue with this comment is "USian." That's gross.
Why is it gross?
I know folks who use it because it's a way to translate Estadounidense, which is Spanish for United Statesian, because "American" is what we should call anyone from any country in the Americas.
There's no one European country that calls themselves "Europeans" at the exclusion of all others. Just clumsy for the USA, I guess. USAliens? Maybe Muricans?
Why would you want to create that term? "American" has always referred to US people in English. The USA isn't even the only United States! Mexico also uses the term and definitely doesn't call us estasounisensans. There is no one country that calls themselves Europeans, but there's no country with Europe in its name so that's a silly comparison. Plus, many of not all European languages use a direct translation of "Americans": les américains, die Amerikaner, etc. We are not the only United States but we are the only country with "America" in its name. Plus we can just call people from the Americas "people from the Americas." There are two continents that make up the Americas, so maybe we should call New Worlders "Americasans," which makes me think that "Americousins" would be a fun name.
Brazilians actually largely call Americans americanos. It's mostly Spanish-speakers from South America who hate calling Americans americanos.
Okay and I've known many who thought other terms were stupid.
It's a common thing in Latin America, and one I disagree with. Endonyms are endonyms and that's that. Romania isn't the only country that was part of the Roman Empire, and it doesn't offend anyone. The Greeks were furious at (now North) Macedonia, but what were Macedonians supposed to do? They lived in a region historically known as Macedonia.
One thing I'll note is that "the Americas" derives from the way the English speaking world defines continents. In Latin America, America is one continent split into three regions; North, Central and South. So for a Latin American, we're all literally americanos, and that's where that resentment comes from.
Just because it's been that way doesn't mean it's correct, or that it doesn't offend people, or that it can't change! I don't think it's silly to play thought experiments with how terms would sound if they didn't have historical inertia.
I still use American to refer to folks from the USA a lot in English, because there's no other good term, frankly. They're all clumsy. In Spanish I always use Estadounidense, however.
I only wanted to bring this up because I thought you assumed someone using USian was being Nationalistic or something, instead of inclusive.
Maybe 'US-american'? In Germany they say 'US-Amerikaner', if there's the need to differentiate, and I think that's not too cumbersome to say.
Just to piggyback off of this, how do you convince someone who supports DeSantis's platform that their misconceptions about fundamental reality are needlessly hurting people? How do I discuss economic policy with someone who's terrified of a woke mind virus? How do I discuss healthcare with an anti-abortion, anti-vaxxer? From their perspective, I'm a fascist, nazi, commie, satanist, and convincing arguments may be outside the realm of interaction.
Not everyone is that extreme. There must be lots of people who don't feel well represented by either party.
Unfortunately there are certainly more people like that than you would reasonably think.
Yes but they are the vocal minority still. I'm in the UK, so this example isn't a perfect one, but my dad voted conservative last election purely because he didn't like the opposition's view on nuclear weapons.
Nothing to do with any other policies or history of the party and how much they've damaged and will continue to damage our country. Just that one thing. I'd be willing to bet there are many more examples like that than the loud extremists.
Just curious, but did the party he voted for have a nuclear weapons policy that he did support?
The leader of the opposition (the labour party) of the time was Jeremy Corbyn. He was known to oppose using nuclear weapons even in retaliation to nuclear weapons being used against the UK. That makes them a useless deterrent and is a common reason that people voted for the conservatives.
Given the invasion of Ukraine (in which, the now evicted from Labour, Jeremy Corbyn supported Russia) it seems like a sensible line in the sand for voters to draw. All of the ideals of the Labour party mean nothing if you don't protect your citizens from invasion.
This is news to me. Got any good articles on the matter? I'd love to learn more.
I was asking about the policy of the party that the person's dad voted for.
Are write-in candidates allowed in U.K. elections?
That party (the conservatives) have been in power for over ten years and their nuclear policy is the established policy of the government.
Again, not what I was asking. I was asking if their dad supported the policy of the party he voted for. I know (based on what they said) that their dad didn't vote for Labour because he didn't like their nuclear policy. And then I was asking if their dad did support the nuclear policy of the conservatives. We can assume that their dad did or didn't, but we can't know unless they respond.
Don’t. Your time is better spent helping people who already want to vote against him but can’t due to voter disenfranchisement.
In full seriousness: it's hard, but possible.
The first thing to understand is that for any decision based on emotion, you can only change that person's mind through manipulation (an ugly word, but fitting). Argumentation, logic, rhetoric are not useful. A more pithy way you may have seen to express this concept is "you can't reason someone out of something that they didn't reason themself into."
Most people on both sides of the political spectrum have based their views on emotion and not logic. I'd wager that most people on tildes tend to be more on the analytical side of things, but even so, most people make most decisions intuitively, not rationally. The litmus test is this: can you describe the legitimate arguments against your views? If not, you're making the decision based on emotion. (Using phrases like "misconceptions about fundamental reality" is usually a good clue, too ;) ).
And I don't mean that in a bad way. Or a good way, really - it just is. But it's important to know which is which.
So, for your interlocutors who have made their points based on emotion, you next need to understand what underpins that emotion. Until you acknowledge whatever fundamental feeling is there, you will never, ever change their mind. Only once they feel understood will you have even this slightest chance.
Here's a specific and common example. A Catholic who believes that abortion is murder will never, ever be swayed by arguments about a woman's right to choose. Hopefully it's obvious why. Arguing about what age life begins at is a waste of your time. Instead, if you want a chance at changing their mind, you need to acknowledge how they feel: "abortion is a terrible thing, and in a perfect world, it would never need to occur..." Only then can you make an argument. "... but studies have repeatedly shown that banning abortion just makes people do it in back alleys. Prohibition didn't work, right? If we allow legal abortion, it gives doctors the chance to talk to the women and explain alternative options like giving the child up for adoption. But I'm with you - and that's why I donate to planned Parenthood, because they offer a lot of education and contraceptive help to try to make sure the pregnancies don't happen in the first place."
That's the foundation: understanding why they feel the way they do. There are a lot of other minor elements ("I get where you're coming from, and also...." works a hell of a lot better than "you're wrong"), but it's all based on really understanding the person on the other side of the table.
I think your argument is good in theory but in my experience it fails in practice in a few places. The first is the understood definition of "legitimate argument". Because a lot of times, one side sees the others arguments as not legitimate, because they spring from a sort of false or fantastic interpretation of reality. So why should they acknowledge an illegitimate argument?
The second issue is that acknowledging an illegitimate argument forces you to lie. In your example, if you are pro choice, abortion isn't inherently terrible. It's often medically necessary. That doesn't mean it's not tragic. But by acknowledging their argument, you compromise your position, and are forced to lie to build rapport. Lieing is never a good way to build lasting trust between two parties.
And last, and this is the hard one in my experience, people forget how to learn. Your method works if people actually learn, that is, take new information, integrate it into their world view, and then update their preconceived notions and opinions based on this new information. But often I will have a conversation with someone, like the abortion example, get them to a place where they agree it is necessary, and then next week they are back to saying "no abortions ever". Why compromise your argument, acknowledge their flawed ones, lie to them, only for them to inevitably erase all the progress?
Thank you for making this comment.
This is the crux of the issue right here. You have to understand the other party and where they're coming from. Perhaps I should have said "legitimate from their point of view" - though, frankly, there is always some truth to the opposing side.
Acknowledging that you understand why somebody feels the way they do isn't lying. Unfortunately I may have accidentally implied that in my effort not to type too much. But I want to be clear - I'm not saying you need to say "I feel the exact same way"; I'm saying you need to successfully demonstrate that you understand them.
Tell me - are they saying "you're right" at the ends of these conversations or are they saying "that's right"?
If they're saying "you're right," they never actually agreed - they're just being polite and they don't want to discuss it anymore.
You're going to think I'm a jerk after this next part, I'm afraid.
I saw a few things in the above that suggested to me that you could do a better job empathizing with and respecting your interlocutor.
If someone were saying this about your beliefs, would you feel inclined to listen to what they thought you should think?
I respect the desire to take an uncompromising principled stand. I have a family member like that. He, too, would say that many people on the other side of the political spectrum aren't living in reality. He, too, would feel that to acknowledge where somebody else is coming from is akin to lying.
He gets told "you're right" a lot. He's very rarely actually changed anybody's mind.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I have a lot of doubt that understanding where someone is coming from is truly enough to break through to them. Like you mention with reasoning yourself into a position, I've started to bring into the beginning of these conversations what I call my reasonableness test. That is, asking the other person, what level of evidence would you need to see in order to consider my claims? If they say something like "there's no amount of evidence you could show me that would convince me of X", then I immediately know that their position isn't based on logic or reason or evidence and they aren't open to seeing things another way. And if they do have an answer, then I know what I need to show them to open their mind. I think people need to be open to considering each other's views even before understanding. Otherwise you're just talking to a smiling brick wall.
You're right, lying is too strong of a word in this situation. And you can acknowledge someone's feelings without necessarily saying you agree, and that's not a lie. This is a very thin line to walk though. It can come off as if you are placating them, belittling them, or are otherwise being insincere, which provokes hostility. Which is basically the "youre right" line.
If someone thought my views were illegitimate, I would want to understand why (because I value having opinions informed by solid evidence and I recognize that I don't know everything and am often wrong). But if I don't agree with their view or if the evidence underpinning their view doesn't meet my criteria for what I would need to consider their view, what weight does their argument actually hold to me? Basically nothing, regardless if they understand me or not. And doesn't this idea go both ways?
I wonder if your principled family member would pass my reasonableness test? Would he say if there is an amount of evidence that would convince him to reevaluate his principles, and what would that evidence look like? To me, that's the hallmark of someone who is truly open to changing their views.
You've articulated your points well, so at the end of the day we're probably just going to have to agree to disagree.
I could've told you that you value logic and reason without you saying anything - it's been clear from your posts, and I mean that as a big compliment.
The thing is that people who base everything on rationality often find it impossible to understand people who work off of emotion.
Without getting into specifics (because they aren't important) my job is to persuade people of things. It is not easy to make someone who didn't arrive at a conclusion logically believe something else, but it's possible - and this is how you do it.
As someone who used to be very concerned about DeSantis running (and still sort of is, just because he's just that deranged), I have come around to the fact that DeSantis doesn't have a sliver of the personality that Trump has that made him so dangerous. He's (a) not funny at all and (b) goes on about the "woke" left so much it's making his own constituents tired. Despite coverage of the guy, he doesn't seem nearly as popular and certainly does not have the cult following Trump does.
I'm personally of the opinion that Trump is probably one of the hardest candidates to beat because of the religious fervor around him.
I agree. As bad as Trump was, he had decades of experience around show business and seems to have an innate sense of what people want to hear. Talk about taxes and jobs and how you're going to make everything OK again. Come up with some wacky nicknames your supporters can repeat. I totally get why someone who doesn't really follow politics loves the idea of a wacky outsider coming in and shaking things up with some good old fashioned common sense.
DeSantis just doesn't have it. He's off-putting with negative charm. All he talks about is the woke stuff. Which is fine for his base, but you can't hang a presidential campaign on it. Even people who don't like "wokeness" tend to land in "it's annoying" and not "this should be the president's top priority. " On the other side DeSantis policy is a hard no for a ton of people. People were willing to give Trump a chance as a sort of unknown wildcard, but DeSantis has years of terrifying political decisions under his belt.
Obviously plenty of people actually like his policies, but they're the sort of people who would vote R no matter what. I dint think the undecided voters are going to be into it.
You think? I think he is just biding his time - when Trump gets convicted, all of that support is going to galvanize behind DeSantis. Which is precisely why he's trying to not go negative on Trump.
In a standoff between him and Biden, I'm pretty convinced DeSantis is going to win.
No, DeSantis has a fundamental problem when running for national office, which is that everyone (well, most everyone) outside of Florida recognize that he's a full-on fascist and find him utterly repulsive. I've always assumed that Floridians don't recognize this themselves b/c of they're comprised of Florida Man.
I mean they were saying very similar things about Trump during the primaries
You mean political pundits and party hacks were saying that about Trump, and that's because they're idiots. My observation comes from the actual revulsion that many, many people have expressed when fully exposed to DeSantis. He was never going to survive the kind of exposure a national campaign requires.
Guess what: Those are the people who shape the narrative of the discussion.
That Trump won the primary should have been an indication that 'vocal minory' is not the correct label for Trump (and DeSantis) supporters. If they are indeed a vocal minority, they are one that is having an outsized influence on the direction and politics of the party, and need to be unequivically squashed. Now.
Unfortunately that's absolutely true (except for the fact that Trump supporters ≠ DeSantis supporters, in case you haven't noticed). That still doesn't mean the pundits and party hacks aren't idiots -- they've demonstrated repeatedly over many years that they are. They're just well-funded idiots who are given the megaphones by $billion media corporations to promote their interests, which means, equally unfortunately, that they have a vested interest in preventing the squashing of the vocal minority.
When trump was elected, a lot of people voted out of spite because of how the entire media and democrat party+Hillary herself constantly called them derogatory terms. That's how you lose an election. Even moderates republicans were tired of getting beat over the head with it.
That doesn't mean most of the people who voted for him actually believed in him, hence why he lost the next election after he proved not to be the god among men he was made up to be.
Demonizing your opposition is a good way to garner them support and sympathy and you don't want that obviously.
In this case, biden is just kinda... idk how to say it, a dogshit candidate, tbh. He seems one foot in the grave and barely seems conscious as it is during his first term, he repeats the same uninformed talking points about guns as most democrat candidates (I mention this brcause even moderate republicans that don't like trump aren't gonna want to vote for him because of this), and trump now has an unsettlingly devoted fanbase, and he at least still has presence of mind.
Which part?
Have you seen clips of biden just like wandering around aimlessly in the background? There's even a meme edit of one of these events: https://youtu.be/ykkjjZYKwQw
If you search "biden wanders off", you're immediately greeted with many more similar instances as well, here's just two more since I'm just writing this on the can.
https://youtu.be/JeXW1Ys1KHg
https://youtu.be/Oktrp8Nterg
I don't think it's propaganda to see the way he is on live tv and think that he doesn't seem all there.
That's not it at all. His fan base is fervent, and Trump draws voters. Trump recieved more votes for president in 2020 than Obama did in 2008. Let that sink in for a moment. He recieved 12 million more votes in 2020 than when he won in 2016. That's about 10% of the entire voting population in 2016. Biden had just slightly more, but only because there was a mass turnouts of never-Trump voters to counter.
DeSantis has alienated school teachers and librarians nationwide. He also sued Disney. The election is won via the swing voters and DeSantis is going to motivate the people who hate him to turn out, vote and campaign against him.
As a Floridian, not in defense of Florida Man, but one of the main issues behind Florida becoming so fascists is not Floridians - it’s transplants
This especially came after 2020. After 2020, so many moved there specifically citing DeSantis as why (normally noting his COVID response). And quite a lot of Floridians saw the writing on the wall and got out (myself included, and a good chunk of LBGT friends).
I’m not saying Floridians aren’t to blame for the mess it’s become - and coming from north central Florida I know how bad the locals can be - buts it’s less “Floridians are fascists/too blind to recognize fascism” and more “Florida became the place for fascists/people too blind to realize they’re supporting fascism” in my experience
Maybe you've already heard this, but This American Life did a podcast about exactly this a few weeks ago: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/805/the-florida-experiment
I wasn't aware that so many people had moved to Florida specifically because of him - it was pretty disheartening. On the other hand, there was a college prof teaching the 'lesbian continuum', which sounded absolutely insane and deeply Freudian the way she explained it and I'd also question how that is being taught tbh. The only part I had heard a lot about before were the number of trans people desperately moving to any blue states for medical care.
I was thinking this was stupid because there's no way there could be enough transplants to make that big of a difference but in 2021 alone, 674,000 people moved to Florida. BUT WAIT! Dude won his last election by 1.5 million votes. Sounds like it ain't the transplants to me.
The last election where the democrats didn’t even try, running out Charlie Christ, and there was less voter turn out because it was understood what the state had become by 2022
Again I’m not saying transplants are the only reason, which you seem to be saying with “Sounds like it ain’t the transplants to me”. I said from the very beginning Floridians are to blame for what the state has become.
But how bad the state has become is in part of the massive transplants, yes. To deny that a massive amount of people moved to the state for political reason isn’t affecting the political landscape of the state, and solely blame locals, is completely minimalist
A big reason that he won by so much is that he was not up against a strong candidate and was already the sitting governor. Crist hasn't won any election since he switched parties from Republican to Democrat. FL hasn't had a [D] governor elected this century, so it was always going to be an uphill battle. The fact that politics in FL have started skewing alt-right since 2016 just made it worse.
I had not, thanks for the link!
Here in Canada we are a ways out from an election but the party currently leading the polls has a leader who basically crowned himself king of the incels and has about as much personality as a piece of Melba toast.
I would be more concerned.
Ugh! Reminds me of the Clinton team Pied Piper strategy and not in a good way. Having Trump run would give me ulcers. The remote chance he might win is not worth the risk in any way imho.
https://theweek.com/speed-reads/1015258/the-pied-piper-strategy
https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/
This is along the lines of my first thought as well. The premise/"reasoning" is fundamentally flawed -- just ask Hillary how well that kind of thinking worked out.
Clinton actually won the popular vote
Which unfortunately ignores the realities of the US election system. There has been a lot of economic discontent across the political spectrum in the "fly-over" states and populist messages resonate in these areas. Bernie Sanders was consistently polling much better in key Midwestern swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin that ended up deciding the election. If Democratic primary voters had been paying attention to polls, they would have realized that running Bernie Sanders would most likely have tipped the scales in the Midwest states without hurting their Democratic base in stronghold states. This is a lot of hindsight though and we don't know exactly what a general election would have looked like between Trump and Sanders.
Edit: Fixed a typo.
Thank you for saying this. Honestly I want the Democrats to run presidential candidates who have experience with hard fought contested elections. Sanders had that experience in Vermont, but so did Jimmy Carter back in the day and many others. There are so many ways to run a candidate where the primary doesn't feel like a coronation which was my (admittedly subjective) perception of how H Clinton became the candidate.
Maybe one day we’ll get a person with integrity and populist appeal past the DNC. Fetterman 2032?
Fetterman had that stroke and in a world where TV charisma matters most, it's a risky proposition.
Even ignoring bernie,
The ONLY political party dumb enough to lose to Trump is the Democratic party, and they're the only ones who might do it again. The hubris, arrogance, and stupidity employed to lose to Trump just cannot be understated. Hilary Clinton and her campaign is one of the absolute best examples of the exact same mindless number crunching that causes so many problems in business and politics. Polls/charts say blah, so we do blah. If they say not blah and I don't like not blah, they must be wrong. Repeat.
It is well known that Bill Clinton didn't think the strategy they employed was working, and he was right. What is mind blowing to me about that election is that from my eyes, hilary probably won that 80/20, but somehow they found MULTIPLE ways to tank it down to 40/60. Any one or two of their atrocious decisions probably still wouldn't have been enough to lose them the election, but I swear that election is going to be taught to anyone learning about running a campaign as a perfect example of how to lose a sure thing.
So I sadly was a 2016 Cassandra and watched the runup to the election with an escalating fear. Some mistakes that were obvious to me was the candidate's obliviousness to how much people hate to be talked down to. Advertising your intellectual chops is great if you are applying to be a cabinet member. After W Bush and Ronald Reagan won their respective elections, people should know that being brighter than your opponent is not a definitive selling point for the presidency.
Likewise H Clinton's elite private school education and her road into politics via her husband's career were not designed to make her universally popular. Add mysogyny and the background of pervasive right wing propaganda against her starting with her role in Bill's health care plan and even before and she was facing some headwinds. She could have probably convinced the country if she had realized how important it was to make her case and understood what people dislike imho but she didn't do it. She struck me as complacent which is not what people want to see in a candidate.
I'd say it goes even farther than that.
Every Hilary speech feels like it was written by a room of speech writers. Love or hate trump, no one is writing that shit that's for sure, and in the final debate he actually often came off as more relatable when he managed to actually say positive things about Hilary while she sorta handwaved the question and then pivoted (you know, as the metrics say you should do).
Her hubris in regards to ignoring the rust belt, the entire email situation (which yes, it is a problem when anyone in the government violates security procedure, I don't care their party or excuse, and looks even worse when you're flippant with lines like "with a cloth?"), her health issues, and the Debbie Wasserman Schultz slap in the face (oh gee we just had this person resign due to suspicious behavior, better onboard them asap) to all the bernie fans were just small parts of a giant picture.
It was a mess of a campaign that showed to me that they don't actually know how to win one. Just how to follow the rule book someone else created about how to win one.
She also has a far from spotless history and... is directly tied to Bill Clinton.
If they had picked literally anyone else as a candidate they probably would've won.
The lesson I took us is that primary votes are idiotic—especially if votes from all states are counted equally. Give ceremonial headpats to the results from the foregone conclusion states and let the marginal states call the shot.
Utterly irrelevant. She knew how presidential elections work - she lost.
She neglected to campaign enough in the swing states. She got complacent.
You say "complacent", I say "corrupt and incompetent" -- potayto/potahto.
When it works well it can look like genius, but if it fails Oh My God what are we in for. That's a no from me dog.
It worked well in Maryland this past election, perhaps because Dan Cox couldn't have been a worse candidate and Maryland is a solidly blue state.
Perhaps that is the key for the Pied Piper Stratedy, it can't be close.
The opposing candidate has to be totally obnoxious and totally obnoxious to a clear majority of voters.
Possibly also don't try it where the stakes are as high as a presidential campaign. Individual legislators can do a lot less harm by and large.
Asking what is good for democrats isn't the right question in my opinion. We should be asking what is best for the country and for our institutions.
I think Trump being held accountable will start to right the ship and set an example that nobody can get away with what he did. After that, whether a republican or democrat gets into office is more inconsequential.
This right here. Running against Trump probably would help voter turnout for Democrats, but it also means risking Trump winning again. That is just not a worthwhile gamble. Not to mention it’d also increase turnout for the far-right.
I’m pretty sure similar logic might’ve even been used in 2016 — some Democrat funding went to Trump so as to alienate the Republican voterbase with an extreme candidate, and look where that got us.
In Trump's defense, pretty much any R winning is almost as bad. I agree with others that Trump's personality cult making it more likely for him to win is more dangerous. However a Pence or DeSantis presidency is no less terrifying.
If anything, more terrifying, because they have the intelligence to not say the quiet part out loud.
Trump being re-elected tells more about the constituency than the figurehead at this point, IMO. It's not the figurehead to worry about in 2024, its about the neighbor who voted for him.
I would rather see Trump elected than another R, simply because it eliminates any and all reasonable claims from moderate R's that they are not culpable in the slide of the party to fascism. There is no more "But I'm still a good person" defense when you vote for the person responsible for a coup attempt.
Au contraire, if they're not saying the quiet part out loud, that means they don't feel they can get away with it. That's a good thing, because it means fascist sentiments are still at least somewhat under wraps from being understood as unacceptable to voice. It has a cooling effect.
Trump's election was a good example of this going south. He said a lot of very nasty, very racist things that traditional politics said should have been suicidal for his campaign, and yet they weren't — instead, we got a bunch of people voting for him because he "tells it like it is."
I would much, much rather have a world where bigots feel like they need to cloak their language in euphemism than one where they feel they can spout their horrid rhetoric openly.
I think the bigger problem is that if a Republican wins, no matter who, they will sweep all of his crimes under the rug. So it does become a question of democrat vs republican.
What is best for the country is for Republicans to lose as many times as it takes for some kind of sanity to return to the party.
Anyone who has beef with Democrats should first focus on why Democrats are the only sane option at the moment: Republican fascism.
Encouraging conservatives to write in Trump while he's in prison would be beneficial.
He can still run from prison though. Wouldn't need a write-in.
For real life?! That sounds completely absurd. How would that even work?! The VP just immediately assumes the role or what?
It's been done. Eugene Debs ran for president from prison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs
The rules limiting who can be eligible to be a candidate are listed in the Constitution and there are not many of them. Convicted criminal is not a listed bar to eligibility.
Wow, that is really something. It seems like being in prison hurt his outcome, he received almost half as many votes as the previous time he ran, but then being a socialist has never been a very popular position in America.
I wonder if it isn’t in the constitution because the founding fathers (?? They wrote it, right?) thought it was too ridiculous a situation to need to legislate against.
I’m so curious about how this would work in practice. I guess they just immediately pardon themselves? Is that possible?
I read an article recently that tells a possible story of how an incarcerated but winning Presidential candidate could pardon themselves upon election -- or more realistically, invoke the 25th Amendment temporarily to give the pardon power to the VP, have them issue the pardon, and resume power, to avoid questions about the legality of pardoning oneself.
https://rollcall.com/2023/06/16/how-inmate-trump-could-become-president-trump-and-pardon-himself/
Thanks for that link. I’ve read horror stories less scary than that scenario! There are some truly absurd laws at play here. I hope we don’t see this play out
Trump is dangerous, but a hell of a lot less so than DeSantis. A candidate that is not only malicious but also smart and a decent demagogue. He is not the chaos agent Trump was, operating with bravado and disorganization. He is going to carefully and meticulously dismantle the system of checks and balances in this county. The judicial is already captured, the legislative is not far behind, especially if he's going to implement the same voting suppression strategies he used in Florida. You wanna see what the impact of that is? Look at Israel 2009 elections.
This line of thinking is akin to "well, a dirty bomb is less dangerous than a nuke"..
I'm sorry but I cannot think of either as more/less dangerous than the other one. They might be dangerous in different ways but I 100% honestly believe that America wouldn't ever recover from either of them.
You are correct. Thus the Democrats and the moderate Republicans better damn well do their job.
That means actually helping people, passing good bipartisan legislation, and not supporting a fascist who wins the primary just because he has an R next to his name.
If either Trump or Desantis wins 2024, that means there are no moderate Republicans. Just fascists and enablers.
I mean yeah, a dirty bomb is less dangerous than a nuke.
In real terms, Trump installed judges. Other than that, he was mostly too incompetent and distracted to enact any kind of significant policy.
DeSantis would get things done. Awful, lasting things. And, he would install more judges too.
The only area where I think Trump might be strictly worse than DeSantis is foreign policy, but I have my doubts that DeSantis would do that much better.
If this were 2016 I might agree with you about the relative danger of DeSantis v Trump. And I agree both are quite dangerous.
However, Trump elected in 2024 would be personally vengeful for all perceived slights and opposition, especially related to his loss in 2020 but not limited to that. His focus will be entirely on punishing his enemies to the exclusion of everything else, except staying in power.
To add to this, I believe he recently (within the past 3 weeks) said to help him get re-elected so he can "get revenge on the government."
EDIT: I can't find it but here is the next best thing from ABC News.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/communication-success/201807/8-signs-of-narcissistic-rage
I looked it up and I couldn't find what I saw a few weeks ago, but this is the next best thing.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-unprecedented-2024-campaign-pitch-elect-revenge-government/story?id=100778347
Exactly. Incompetant, narcissistic, malicious man-child is a far less dangerous leader than an intelligent, but just as malicious one.
I couldn’t disagree more. I’m used to it, as I had to sit through years of liberals saying “I hate Trump, but if he gets impeached the even worse Mike Pence will be in charge!” The attitude about Pence changed pretty fast, and let’s remember why: Trump literally tried to end democracy in the United States. If the election had been slightly closer, if one more tangible doubt spreading news story has been manufactured, if the insurrection on January 6th had slightly more dangerous participants, the US would be a dictatorship right now. And after all these indictments, if Trump wins in 2024, do you think he’s going to happily play golf for four years and retire like nothing happened?
Trump is uniquely dangerous (a point that was obvious back in 2016). To me it’s like we’re in the boy who cried wolf story, only the wolf is out there eating the villagers while the boy is still pretending “a bear is coming!” The best case scenario is that Trump gets absolutely embarrassed in the debates (assuming he participates) and becomes a joke to republicans.
I wasn't one of those liberals. I didn't think Pence was worse (though the big Gilead-like upheaval they warned us Pence will lead did end up happening under Trump). I'm not even saying Trump isn't dangerous. But Trump tried to end democracy in the most obvious, crude, elephant-in-a-chinashop sort of way. So obvious in fact that his allies had to go against him. I don't think it was almost successful, but I don't care to argue that point. And even that idiotic way managed to convince 2/3 of Republicans.
DeSantis is going to try to end democracy legally. And it's not going to be so evident that people will be able to point it out and rise up against it, it will be subtle and calculated. It's going to be what's been happening in Poland and Israel and Hungary in the past decade. But I don't think it matters much - even if DeSantis loses now I believe he would still get his chance. He's going to be President.
I have 0 doubts that Pence was the man doing all the policy work and pulling the strings for Trump the way Cheney was for Bush 2.
Trump was the big doofus they could throw up and point the blame at with plausible deniability.
Thanks for sharing, I respect your response. At the end of the day, it’s a judgment call, and your view may indeed come to pass.
If by some wild chance Trump is not the Republican nominee, it really wouldn't matter who the Democrats ran -- Republicans would split the vote between Trump as an independent and whoever the R nominee is.
I meant Trump being totally out of the 2024 election.
I just don't see that happening, I guess. I think if Trump were somehow disqualified that Republican voters wouldn't be as mobilized, so it probably wouldn't matter again who the Dems ran.
I feel like people should worry more about doing what is right than doing what is beneficial for the democratic party. I'm not saying those two things are mutually exclusive, but we should remember that it is not the case that the democratic party is entirely good and the republican party is entirely bad. They both support/are the capitalist oligarchy.
Good for the Democratic Party as it stands? Maybe. The only reason anyone is tolerating their bullshit is because of the threat of a lunatic like trump getting in.
Good for the Democratic voter/the country? Absolutely not.
I think the "Trump is so bad all the Republicans won't turn out to vote" strategy fared poorly in the past and I see no strong reason to think it can't happen again.
I think it will be good for Trump to run because we're getting close to seeing a real schism in the republican party where they run a real risk of being a regional party. Look at Colorado for example the head of the GOP here is basically run out of an apartment and spends his whole time attacking fellow Republicans. In a recent interview, you can hear a real break from moderate Republicans that they need to move on and accept election results.
My only concern is if moderates never retake the republican or conservative party, whatever it ends up morphing into because the current batch of lunatics have no interest or capability in governing. You looked someone like Mitt Romney, yes disgusting and Mormon I agree, but he was an actual governor and did what could be considered a relatively good job in Massachusetts.
If we didn't see a schism in the party following the 2015 primaries, we are never going to see it. Basically everyone united against him and lost, then, instead of doing the honest thing and oppose the same policies and behaviors they decried, in the following 4 years they all fell in line behind him. The right doesn't have the same issues the left does worldwide, where it keeps splintering off in purity tests and cannibalizing itself. The right, worldwide, had proven that they are willing to plug their noses and go with whomever promises them victory, convictions be damned.
It absolutely has purity tests if you look at what happened to Liz Cheyney. The right is very different country to country and what is true in other counties is not true in individual states.
Politics is very localized compared to what the reddit comment section will tell you. Any sort of national polling is meaningless right now and a lot of state down ballot initiatives and congressional races factor heavily into how well a candidate will perform.
Liz Cheney refused to fall in line, that's what happened to her. It wasn't a purity test.
Politics can have both local and global trends. The left turning on itself and atomizing is a global trend that goes all the way back to the 90s. Longer. The right embracing and uniting behind fascism, manufactured xenophobia and turning to illiberalism is also a global trend. I don't need reddit to tell me that, I listen to enough political scientists pointing out those trends, and lived in several countries which are going through the exact same process.
No, No, No to trump. Trump should be in prison and it's key to healing a country that has been broken since Nixon was pardoned and Reagan's crimes of high treason were ignored because he was old and likable or something.
I would rather have DeSantis run, and possibly win than Trump even being on the ballot. I know Desantis is awful, but the only president who has a proven track record of insurrection is Trump. The whole idea of people preferring criminal Trump running because he'll "probably lose" is just insane to me.
It is CRITICALLY IMPORTANT that we demand accountability for politicians who break the law, the resistance to this has caused great harm for 50 years.
This is the problem here, because you Americans insist on people "registering to vote" before they can register.
Republicans have been undermining this ability for a good decade.
Same with not having a public holiday on voting day and having voting locations in completely random places with bans in place not to offer drinks to anyone in sweating their ass off in the queue.
This American agrees with you. Having the voter registration process formalized and mandatory at 18 like selective service registration and creating a holiday for going to the polls would solve big problems. Felons could still be removed from the rolls (which I personally don't agree with but some people do). Some people don't register here because they don't want to serve on juries.
Oh, I didn't know that being called for Jury Duty was combined with the voting registry? That's bonkers.
They also generate jury duty lists from people with drivers licenses.
I was a registered Green in New York and an activist in the Green Party (elected to the state committee, been to Howie Hawkins’ house) until 2008 after the Green party imploded in the 2004 election and I wanted to vote against Clinton II in the 2008 primaries so I registered Democratic.
I voted Green in the 2016 and 2020 generals in NY because the electoral college means a vote for a mainstream candidate you think is second best is a wasted vote in an uncompetitive state
I like Biden, he would have my vote if he needed it. I think it is sad he has less approval than he does but he has a proven ability to beat Trump. I wish he was quicker to approve ATACMS and DPICM to Ukraine but he is threading a needle there.
I have thought about registering Republican to vote against Trump in the primary but boy are the choices unappealing, if I had to pick one it would be Pence, I mean he kept the lights on through the Trump admistration. All the rest are really insane. I think DeSantis’s position on woke is not a winner, very few Americans care strongly about that issue, see Q22 in
https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/04/Fox_April-21-24-2023_National_Topline_April-26-Release.pdf
the real strength of Republicans in the long term has come from support from business interests, it is so out of character for a Republican governor to declare war on that state’s number 1 employer. Referendum after referendum is showing anti-abortion is not even popular in red states.
I can change my registration at the last minute so I can watch how the primaries are going but it seems quite like like Trump will get wrecked in the general so why do anything?
(Anyhow YOShInOn would take one look at the vote/comments ratio and tell me this is a knock down-drag out discussion that I should ignore and not jump into but…)
There is even money on a recession occurring the the next year.
If a recession happens, Trump likely gets elected with full control.
Normally presidents have little impact on recessions.
I worry the Republicans will want to "reduce taxes and reduce debt."
That sort of thinking led to the great depression.
I’m curious how much voters in general care about things like age and debates. From the outside (ie as a not-American) it seems like people are largely one side or the other, and they’ll vote for whoever their candidate is regardless. Is this just because they’re the vocal minority? How big is the section of the voting public that genuinely makes a decision based on the candidate and not the party they represent?
Until Trump, things said in debates could change the outcome of an election.
Age is mostly about the age of officials in that other person's party. Sometimes people fume about the age of congressional members from their own party, I think, to vent general frustration at the system.
I think Climate Science and certain economic issues like the price of housing fuel frustration with older leaders. The millenial / Gen Z cohort in the US want to take political power. As an Xer, we were never in the running. We are too small as a group although we have produced noteworthy individuals.
In my nonexpert opinion, it varies from election to election. The upcoming election, with abortion rights on the line among other issues, I expect very little deviation from party line voting by democrats. But Ronald Reagan for example took many voters from the other side, either directly or by them being too discouraged to show up to vote. Carter at the end of his term did not look appealing to many people which is too bad. He had many excellent policies. His capacity as a leader was demonstrated by his many accomplishments post presidency. But he also struggled to inspire his base and Reagan absolutely took some of his expected voters in 1980.
A real shame because Carter seemed like a very solid guy and Reagan was, well Reagan. Shows the power of celebrity too, which is what got us into the Trump mess to a certain extent.
I try to avoid US politics as someone who can’t affect it in any way, but I do follow the elections a little as that has such a big impact globally. It’ll be interesting to see how the next one goes. Worldwide I’ve been shown again and again that any time I think “surely people will never vote for this person” the voting public proves me wrong. I hope that is not the case this time.
As someone who will be directly impacted, I more than share your hope. A vengeful Trump presidency would be a worse disaster than what we have already seen.
Vivek Ramaswamy could be that dark horse candidate, at least most Indians are rooting for him. However, a lot of Trump's typical populist fan base is against Vivek as he is not a Christian. So difficult to say, it will be either Vivek or DeSantis (ruling out the rare scenario where Trump somehow pulls through this despite all the lawsuits against him)
I don't think the Republicans of 2023 will nominate Vivek Ramaswamy.
You opened a huge "can of worms" there without explaining a thing. I'd guess you're suggesting a kind of "burn the world down and recover from the ashes" strategy, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. I doubt I have anything to add to the conversation, but I'm curious to hear what you mean!
That's the kind of strategy many of the "moderate" parroted when electing Trump. Look at us now!
Fair enough; thanks for explaining. I sort of agree with this extreme cynicism--probably the same "dark, twisted" part of myself that I'm sure you also try to resist--but it sounds like I'm better at resisting it. I don't have a lot of confidence in humans' collective intelligence but can't help but think that most people at least have good intentions. We're just kind of dumb as a big ~8 billion (or even just 331.9 million) group.