2024 General Election Thread

Perhaps the media should ignore the 50% of his own party that's briefing against him.

Or, perhaps the media should focus on the folks pushing members of the party to complain about Biden. Like this guy. Not mentioned in the NYT article is that he left the hedge fund Sequoia Captial after their investment in FTX imploded.

Or that Peter Thiel, who isn't really a fan of democracy, pushed Trump to pick JD Vance as his VP, and how he's now hired Nate Silver to work for him.

To quote "Deep Throat" from All the President's Men, "Follow the money."

She’s dead.



https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/19/politics/sheila-jackson-lee-texas-dies/index.html

Reporters are supposed to report on stories.

Stories occur when something actually happens.

If they want to flesh out the stories a bit, they can get commentary from people that know something about what happened.

Comments by themselves are almost never stories.

"Trump called someone fat on Twitter" is not a story.

"Ariana Grande posted a selfie and some of the comments were really, really mean" is not a story.

"George Clooney has an opinion on Biden" is not a story, unless Clooney actually runs to replace him.

What the media is doing right now is gossip blog bullshit. It's intentionally fanning the flames and trying to create a narrative.

Do you think there aren't Republicans that would call for Trump to resign if they were asked for comment? Not one single former Republican president, vice president, or nominee spoke at the RNC convention. Why aren't they reporting on that? Because it's not the narrative they want to push.

Damn, 6 weeks.

From the background reporting I've seen (Maddow did a riff on it) Vance isn't just Theil's "associate" - all the signs are he's basically Theil's sockpuppet.

Turns out he'd have been doing the aspiring Ceaser a favor.

Junior's beard, actually.

But she's both stupid AND loud so MAGA overlooks her flaws.

When you're not even old enough to be president yet and it falls to you to school half your party about basic reality every one of them ought to already know.

Congresswoman AOC Spills The Tea And Unloads on Democratic Cowards On Instagram Live - YouTube

AOC did an IG live last night calling for Joe Biden to stay in the 2024 race. She warned that if he exits, it wouldn’t be a smooth elevation of Kamala Harris and it’d be a chaotic fight. She said Democrats calling for this want to replace not just him but the entire ticket.
She said she’s been in rooms with Democrats and asks: so if Biden drops out what’s next? And doesn’t get satisfying answers on how the process would work. She argued Biden’s detractors haven’t thought this through. Also said she doesn’t judge voters who disagree w/ her on this.
Here's a thread where a reporter wrote out her argument (which has more wisdom in it than I've seen from any other highly placed pol or pundit discussing this)

Excerpts

AOC on IG Live: "If you think there is consensus among people who want Joe Biden to leave, and they will support Kamala, you are mistaken...a lot of them are not just interested in removing the president, they are interested in removing the old ticket."
AOC: "If you think that is going to be an easy transition, I'm here to tell you that a huge amount of the donor class and these elites who are pushing for the president not to be the nominee also do not want to see the VP be the nominee."
AOC: "I have stood up in rooms with all of these people and I have said, 'game out your actual plan for me.' What are the risks of this going to the Supreme Court? And no one had an answer for me...I'm talking about the lawyers. I'm talking about the legislators."
AOC: While I understand the case some folks may be making from a theoretical perspective or a polling perspective, I'm here as a person who is responsible for executing decisions and not just opining on them, I have not seen the plan.
AOC: When a convention is in 4ish weeks, when Michigan has to finalize their ballot 2 days after the convention concludes...the legal problems start to mount, I am concerned about the lack of thought I have seen from the individuals who would be responsible for executing on this.
AOC: There is no safe option...I have not seen an alternative scenario that I feel does not set us up for enormous peril based on what I'm noticing privately and what I see publicly.
AOC: I have not seen what I need to see to substantiate an alternative (to Biden). What I will say is what upsets me is people saying we will lose. For me, to a certain extent, I don't care what name is on there. We are losing. My community does not have the option to lose.
AOC: My community does not have the luxury of accepting loss in July in an election year. My people are the first ones deported. They're the first ones put in Rikers...We need to make decisions in the conditions we have before us, even if they're ugly, even if they're hard.
AOC: I do think that people underestimate Biden's performance. I think that's how he became president, through people underestimating his performance.


AOC: What I'm seeing here in terms of how this decision is being made through a litigation among a certain class is disturbing to me. The mechanisms by which this decision is being made is concerning me.
AOC: When I'm talking to people in rooms, I'm hearing "my donor this, my donor that" not "my voters this, my voters that." ... I could give two damns what a bunch of rich people think. What I care about is what the working class thinks and what people not on social media think.
AOC: Joe Biden actually stomps among old people, who are hard for Democrats to win. Those are not people who are on Twitter but they vote more than any other bracket. You can't assume those voters will transfer to any other candidate.
AOC: People say I'm a neolib sell-out careerist. If I were here to sell out, there are much more lucrative ways!
AOC: I think there are certain things about Joe Biden as a candidate and as a person that people often conflate. The debate had no audience. Then people went the next day and saw that he did amazing at a rally. It went super well. Joe Biden needs the energy of people around him.
AOC: You can totally rake me over the coals. Trust me, if I were trying to do something that I thought was calculatingly the best for me, I would not be on this Live right now. But I'm doing this because I care deeply about the outcome of this election.
AOC: I would regret not raising some of these matters that I feel are not getting appropriate consideration. It bums me out when I see how many people and perspectives are being left out of the conversations about this decision.
AOC: I'm not here to have a debate. I'm not here to argue. I'm not here to say anyone is wrong. What I'm humbly trying to do is just contribute some of these concerns because it's real & what I think is a risk.
AOC: Maybe I'm wrong, but one thing I get very concerned about is Clarence Thomas and the Supreme Court deciding this election. It's already happened before. That's how George W. Bush became president.
AOC: Maybe I'm taking a big L. But I think that there are just real concerns. It's annoying me how this is being litigated on CNN. A lot of people are just not on the ground.
AOC: I've been on the left, I am on the left, and I've seen the left be really wrong before electorally. I've seen the left be very right electorally.
President Biden has very strong union support, and that's not something that just goes automatically to any Democrat.
AOC: The theory of how labor aligns itself politically versus the reality and process of it – it's not easy, and it's really hard-earned. I was elected as a democratic socialist. Did that mean that unions automatically supported me? No! I had to work for years and years.
AOC: I just want people to come to their conclusions eyes wide open.
-----
Former senior Biden official makes an interesting point to Greg Sargent, worth thinking about: At this point, suspicion that the remove-Biden camp wants to also pass over Kamala Harris has itself become a big obstacle to getting Biden to step aside:

Trying to dump both is party suicide on every conceivable level.
-------------
gonna add this because hardly anyone who comments on the public discourse seems to "get it" as much as David Roberts. Technically he's a climate and environment guy not politics, but the political pundits often get too buried in their own beltway silo (even if they don't live there). This was posted in reaction to AOC's video

Thread by @drvolts on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App

If you’re getting’news” from Rachel Madcow, then you’re not getting news. She’s the Tucker Carlson of the left and just like Carlson was sued and had to admit her program was just entertainment.

These are all rumors at this point. I do like how AOC went from rebel outsider to DNC shill insider who does what she’s told.

Extraordinarily disappointing.

Also, discuss...

Discuss what? A gambling site? Why?

Peter Thiel (who pushed to get JD Vance as Trump’s VP, after spending $10 million to get Vance in the Senate) not only owns one, but hired Nate Silver to help run it.

https://www.axios.com/2024/07/16/nate-silver-polymarket

You’re relying on a metric that’s designed to take people’s money, four months out from an event, where the polling averages have historically been wrong more than 50% of the time. How’s that make sense? The average American hasn’t paid attention to politics at this point, and any theoretical replacement candidate for Biden hasn’t been subjected to the massive bombardment of negative ads that will be unleashed the moment they’re put on the head of the ticket.

Heck, if it’s Kamala, we know that they’ll be running Birtherism 2.0 with her and pointing out that she’s got a vagina and is thus “unqualified” for the job.

Oh, and there’s no circumstances where yanking Biden off the ballot wouldn’t result in the election being fought out before SCOTUS if Trump lost. None. Anybody want to bet that SCOTUS will rule against Trump? Anyone? Anyone at all?

Yes, I know all of that. My takeaway is not what it says about the general election but about the Democratic candidate, an issue much nearer at hand.

I don't recall Rachel Maddow putting forward a legal defense that no sane person would consider what she said on air truth in a court of law, getting fired for saying things on air that caused not only lawsuits but massive corporate boycotts, and then disgrace herself with an interview of a power mad murdering dictator.

It doesn’t matter what unreliable metrics say about Biden. You know, because they’re unreliable.

Lying turd-gulper.

She didn't admit shit, the judge hand-waved it with some jargonese your dogshit sources clearly twisted, and she was fucking right, OAN is Russian propaganda, and Daily Beast proved it, and wasn't sued for it, because OAN clearly have a bigoted lesbian hate-boner for Maddow.

https://www.courthousenews.com/nint...sal-of-defamation-suit-against-rachel-maddow/

Really, they should have just run a real primary.
I know, traditionally they don't really do that for sitting Presidents, but maybe they should.

The last time the Dems did that was in 1980. Remind me again how that worked out for them?

Ugh. Ted Kennedy. Always a douche.

They changed the primaries so that SC would go first instead of NH to make it more favorable to Joe Biden.

AOC is right about debates not really mattering. Gore made Bush look like an ignorant fool, but the media played it as Gore looking like a mean bully. Hillary knew what she was talking about while Trump mumbled "no puppet, no puppet," and threatened to put her in jail, but the media didn't insist Trump should pull out.

At this point i think it's fair to say that the people trying to push Biden out are more interested in sabotaging the Democratic party than in helping defeat Trump. So of course Rick is onboard.

Many people in Canada, Europe, and Australia are finding out and bitching about the same shit that has been happening in the US for at least 25 years. Those same people think trump isn’t any worse than Biden.

I invite them to trade places with me. I’ll go live in Europe, you come here.

What are the cowardly Biden Bros going to do if Biden is dropped and Kamala does not make it? Are they going to stay home and not vote? Are they going to go third party? No, they will get their cowardly asses to the polls and vote blue. You lose nothing and you gain votes by dumping the useless old Biden who is driving votes to a third party and putting other voters to sleep.

Take all the negativity Biden has created in his own party and toss it overboard with him. The difference between Blue Maga and Red MAGAts is Blue MAGA does not stay home if Biden is gone. You do not lose the base because the base is still dems. Biden does not have a cult. He has a bunch of people who are dem loyalists who are afraid of Trump.

I still doubt Biden drops because this is all about his old man ego. He thinks he knows everything, and he is angry because he is an old fool being braced up by his people, and his people are leaving because he is used up and can't get his shit together anymore because of age. Angry old men would rather run the country into the ground than let it go. We see the repugs doing that, and Biden has always been a repug. It is all about destroying the country if they feel they cannot be in charge anymore.

Good to see the Biden people are the new owners of AOC. This is all very Biden. Just like every old out of touch white guy he turns to the young minion and thinks they control the opinions of all the kids so if she says it then they will all blindly follow. Then all the Biden bros start thinking if AOC says it then the kids have to believe it.

Maybe if AOC does the Biden danmce on tik tok then all the anti-Biden people will come back. Because Biden is such a cult of personality that it is just that AOC has not come out and said we all have to follow him that he has been losing support.

AOC has spent a lot of time selling out to the Biden people, and it shows. They snapped the leash and said get out there for your old man and she did. Her opinion does not change the fact that Biden is pushing people away from voting for him. Get rid of him and you might get some of the never biden people back. You also do not lose any Biden people because they were all dem loyalists and anti-Trump people. Biden has no loyal cult. The best he has is some money support which wont go with him, and was leaving him anyway.

It is all better without Biden. Also, time is not a thing with four months to go. Maybe if it were a month I could see it. America has the memory of an 80 year old dementia patient. In four months they won't remember who Biden was.

The deadline for the ballot in Ohio is after the RNC convention but before the Dem convention, that's why they planned to nominate Biden early. Ohio refused to make an exception this time around.

Time is absolutely a thing. Every state has a deadline to get on the ballot.