The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[N.E. Brigand]

Noting this here, since it happened in conjunction with a campaign stop:

Donald Trump made a public show of apparently buying a handgun in South Carolina today. He's under federal indictment (in two different jurisdictions), and to purchase the gun, he would have to fill out an ATF form attesting that he was not under indictment. Notably this is the very activity (illegally owning a gun and lying about his status on a federal form) that Hunter Biden has been charged for. South Carolina has a similar law on the books. So Trump would have violated both federal and state law. (That said, I believe there have been some court rulings suggesting that such laws violate the Constitution.)

However, Trump's spokesperson subsequently explained that Trump only said that he was going to buy the gun, but he didn't actually do it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Just like he only said that he was buying lunch for everyone at the Cuban restaurant in Florida after getting indicted there, but didn't actually do it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Pleased to see that not single Supreme Court Justice (not even Thomas or Alito) has supported Alabama's brazen attempt to continue to deny equal voting rights to its African-American citizens.

[N.E. Brigand]

At the invitation of the UAW, President Biden today walked a picket line with strikers in Michigan:



Also today, the United Farm Workers union endorsed Biden's reelection.

Meanwhile, former President Trump will "speak Wednesday at non-union Macomb Co. automotive parts manufacturer." And there are some rumors that in order to get into the event, would-be attendees have to show their social media history on their phones.

[N.E. Brigand]

Only in the past couple weeks have I become aware that there's a Fox News personality named Jessica Tarlov, who has apparently been one of two alternating liberal panelists on the network's afternoon talk show, "The Five," for the past year and half. I appreciate that she's getting some uncomfortable facts about Donald Trump in front of Fox viewers.



Earlier on the same program, she also responded another panelist's claim that President Biden is "a walking stand-in who can't even stand and he's about this close to falling down again" with the astute observation that "today he was standing upright on the picket line with the auto workers." Speaking of which, Biden himself is now touting today's historic move on his official social media feed:



Biden does seem a bit stiff in that clip, to be sure. But I felt that way in 2019, too, when I wrote to a (libertarian-leaning but hard-working) campaign reporter and asked that, if he observed any mental decline on Biden's part (from his vice presidential days), that he please report on it so that the public could make a fair decision about whether to vote for Biden or for another Democrat. Biden's performance in the campaign and as president proved my concerns to be unfounded.

[N.E. Brigand]

Just like he only said that he was buying lunch for everyone at the Cuban restaurant in Florida after getting indicted there, but didn't actually do it.

Lost in yesterday's news about Donald Trump buying (or claiming to buy) a gun at a South Carolina gun store is that the shop is best known as the place where a neo-Nazi purchased the gun he used earlier this year to kill three people at a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida.

[Frelga]

To be fair, that was all that was the focus initially. And then I guess someone realized that it would be illegal for him to buy a gun anywhere.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Oh, this is rich. 24 years too late, Ralph.

[Frelga]

As someone supposedly said to another ex-candidate, thank you, you've done quite enough.

[Sunsilver]

Someone refresh my memory - what did Nader do to to piss off the Democrats?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

He ran as the Green Party candidate in 2000 and received far more votes in Florida than the recount ultimately determined Bush won by. The vast majority of those votes would have gone to Gore and Gore would have won the election, had Nader not acted as a third party spoiler.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm not sure which would be more disturbing: that he really does believe this, or that he is just saying it to pander to his audience (ETA: referring to the Tim Scott clip).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, Biden apparently has a new partner in his campaign.

[Frelga]

This is not the first ad where Biden used statements by prominent Republicans verbatim. The last I saw was them commenting on his pro-union stance and the gains unions made lately.

Things Republicans think are a bad idea are kind of mind boggling.

[N.E. Brigand]

Josh Marshall rightly calls out the terrible job many mainstream outlets did of covering Donald Trump's campaign rally in Michigan last night. Despite it being clear by early yesterday that he was speaking at a non-union auto parts shop, some supposedly neutral national outlets continued to describe it as an address to union workers, and they've all ignored what the Detroit News discovered: that some of the people in attendance were paid ringers.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The only part of the above post that I question is the word "some". I would guess that "most" is probably more accurate.

It is possible to remain objective and report the actual facts. The media seems to constantly fail that standard when it comes to Trump. I'm not entirely sure why that is.

[N.E. Brigand]

New PPP polling has Joe Biden leading Donald Trump by 3-4 points in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which if it held could mean, ironically, that there's a not inconsiderable possibility that Biden wins the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. Of course, at this point, it's all speculatiion, but as Parker Molloy points out, that means Republicans might finally have a chance to use the plan they developed in 2000 when they expected Al Gore to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote to George W. Bush. (As everyone knows, the opposite happened, and the Republican won the presidency while losing the popular vote, as also happened in 2016.) Republicans were "preparing talking points about the Electoral College's essential unfairness," which they planned to disseminate via conservative talk radio. Also:

"Local business leaders will be urged to lobby their customers, and clergy will be asked to speak up for the popular will and Team Bush will enlist as many Democrats as possible to scream as loud as they can. 'You think "Democrats for Democracy" would be a catchy term for them?' asks a Bush adviser."

The Bush campaign's plan was to urge swing state electors to vote for the national popular vote winner rather than for the candidate who won their state.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, RFK, Jr. is preparing to abandon his run for the Democratic Party nomination and run as an independent instead.

[N.E. Brigand]

Meanwhile, RFK, Jr. is preparing to abandon his run for the Democratic Party nomination and run as an independent instead.

While there are reasons to think this might hurt Donald Trump more than Joe Biden, I'm still not happy. Spoiler campaigns are acts of selfishness.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Despite the fact that he is more popular with Republicans than with Democrats, I doubt that his candidacy would hurt Trump. Trump supporters don't support anyone else. I don't think he would hurt Biden much either, but I agree with you. And as we saw in 2000, sometimes it doesn't take much for a spoiler campaign to have disastrous results.