The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Right? The circular firing squad turned into a blitzkrieg.

ETA (rather than making a new post so quickly):


Even better (particularly since most polls were showing Biden doing worse when RFK, Jr. was in the mix:

[Frelga]

As someone on Twitter said, what's Obama gonna do, make a playlist?

Under "things idgaf about", George Clooney endorsed Harris.

Some MAGA genius is suing for wasting his money on printing thousands of Let's go Brandon t-shirts. This confused me, because I thought those were pro-Biden, before I remembered the nasty back story.

Edit re V's last tweet - i wish he titled it something else because now I need brain bleach

[Dave_LF]

Even better (particularly since most polls were showing Biden doing worse when RFK, Jr. was in the mix

This is good news, but at this point, she has both the novelty and blank slate factors working in her favor. Both will wear off. In other words, she probably can't improve her positives very much--to maintain or improve on those polling numbers, she's going to need to cut Trump off at the knees.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

In one of a series of social media posts that Donald Trump made late last night, he referred to himself as a "fine and brilliant young man".

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I don't know if I should share this or not, but it is too funny to have the Trumpers gradually realize that this guy is not one of them.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Think they are scared?

[N.E. Brigand]

As several people have noted, the main reason that Republicans are talking about filing lawsuits to prevent anyone from Joe Biden from being the Democratic nominee is not that they have a real hope the lawsuits will succeed but rather to get the public to think there's something "illegitimate" about Kamala Harris's candidacy.

But it occurs to me that maybe there's another reason, although it's a longshot possibility. Maybe they're hoping to have the opposite effect: to get the public to accept the idea of making a late switch. I keep seeing stories about how Donald Trump and other Republicans are starting to have doubts about their choice of J.D. Vance. Is there any chance that the Republicans will try to replace him?

[N.E. Brigand]

Think they are scared?

Seems that way! And I think it's undercut by the fact that Rep. James Comer today admitted that the impeachment inquiry into President Biden was never meant to result in impeachment.

Also, Vice President Harris has never had responsibility for securing the United States' southern border. The portfolio assigned to her by President Biden gave her some oversight into U.S. efforts to fight the root causes of immigration from Latin America, i.e., funding to improve material conditions for people there so that they would be less inclined to attempt to immigrate to the U.S.

[N.E. Brigand]

Remember, there's already been an assassination attempt against Vice President Harris, two weeks before she was even inaugurated: one of the pipe bombs planted on January 6, 2021 was placed next to Democratic National Committee headquarters in D.C., and Harris was in that building when the bomb was found.

[Frelga]

House GOP leaders urge members: Stop making race comments about Harris

Spoiler alert - he wasn't very successful.

[N.E. Brigand]

"What percentage of the American population has Donald Trump sexually assaulted?" -- J.D. Vance (in October 2016)

At about the same time, Vance also "liked" this tweet that someone else posted:

"Maybe the Central Park 5 could take out a full-page ad to condemn the coddling of thug real estate barons who commit serial sexual assault."

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump's Project 2025 would raise taxes on the lower and middle classes while handing out tax cuts to the rich]includes "new income tax brackets would raise taxes on the lower and middle classes while handing out tax cuts to the rich":

[N.E. Brigand]

ETA (rather than making a new post so quickly):

Political Polls
2024 National GE:
Harris 44% (+2)
Trump 42%)

Reuters/Ipsos, 1,018 RV, 7/22-23

Even better (particularly since most polls were showing Biden doing worse when RFK, Jr. was in the mix:

Kyle Griffin
NEW Reuters/Ipsos poll ...

THREE-WAY
Kamala Harris 43%
Donald Trump 38%
RFK Jr. 8%

MoE +/-3%

However, the other two polls conducted since Vice President Harris launched her campaign Sunday find Donald Trump leading:

--Marist has Trump +1 in H2H, tied in big field...
--Morning Consult has Trump +2 in H2H

"H2H" means head-to-head, i.e., a two-candidate race. It's interesting that the two polls that included RFK Jr. find that his presence pulls more from Trump than from Harris.

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Edited to add that the Trump campaign apparently believes Harris will take the lead temporarily.

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Edited again to add: meanwhile, here in Ohio, the Secretary of State's office has confirmed that an initiative to place a state constitutional amendment to require fair legislative districts on the ballot this fall has collected enough valid signatures: 414,000 were needed and 535,000 have been validated. Ohio has previously passed a redistricting amendment, but it was toothless and state Republicans have been able to ignore it. This one should be stronger -- if voters approve it this fall.

[Frelga]

Filed under "there's no wrong reason to do the right thing" - Andrew Yang endorsed Harris.

The polls are not very encouraging, tbh. It was great to see the enthusiasm over the last three days but most of it came from people who'd vote for a pickled herring if that was the only Democrat on the ticket. And her opposition have not had a chance to fashion an attack for the benefit of the uninformed voter.

[N.E. Brigand]

What does that ["DEI"] stand for, Voronwë?

diversity, equity and inclusion

Alternatively, delusion, entitlement and idiocracy.

Acyn:
Charlamagne Tha God: "MAGA has a lot of DEI hires too. Conservatives have a lot of DEI hires. DEI stands for Delusion, Entitlement, and Idiocracy. They are delusional because they think Donald Trump is their savior. They're entitled because they're a bunch of privileged white men who want everybody else to stay in their place. And Idiocracy comes into place because that's the move the RNC reminds me of."

Further suggestions I've seen, in reference to Donald Trump: "Deranged, Erratic, and Immature" or "Dumb, Entitled, and Ignorant."

Shouldn't use "entitled" in two different formulations, though. And "dumb" and "ignorant" are practically synonyms.

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Edited to add: The argument that Vice President Harris is a "DEI hire" rests largely on the claim that Joe Biden only selected her as his running mate because he'd promised to choose a black woman. But that's not true. (He did tell Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina that he would appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court. But so what? The whole idea that diversity should not be considered is bonkers. It's based on the premise that a powerful elite can oppress other groups of people for centuries and then claim that none of them have the credentials they were never allowed to earn.)

[Frelga]

Filed under things I don't want clarified - why posts critical of Trump's running mate Vance imply that he had a carnal relationship with a couch.

[N.E. Brigand]

Some Republicans seem to think it's a good idea to note that some of Kamala Harris's ancestors owned slaves.

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Republicans' eagerness to paint Kamala Harris as a "DEI hire," which necessitates them stating that her candidacy undermines the supposedd will of the people who wanted Joe Biden (never mind the polling that shows 83% of Americans think President Biden was right to step aside) -- shows that "they're so racist they're finally admitting Joe Biden was democratically elected."

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It turns out J.D. Vance mentioned Mountain Dew in Hillbilly Elegy. Also, it is by far the soft drink with the biggest gap in popularity between Republicans and Democrats. (At the other end of the scale, the soft drink that skews most Democrat is Fanta. And neither drink is very popular overall, with each being the first choice of less than 2% of consumers.)

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Earlier today, it was reported that the Trump campaign plans to run "Willie Horton" attacks against Kamala Harris. It's already started. Here they complain that Harris, then a U.S. Senator, raised money in 2020 for the bail of a Minneapolis man who "was charged with the attempted murder of two police officers during the 2020 riots." But there's a problem: the man was acquitted by a jury because it turns out that the two cops shot at him first (for being out after curfew) from an unmarked van. He had a permit to carry a gun, and he returned fire in self defense. In fact, one of the two cops later was convicted of assaulting him.

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Sen. Joe Manchin now says he never had plans to challenge Vice President Harris for the nomination.

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Hmm: "Elon Musk backs down from $45 million a month pledge to Trump, says he doesn’t ‘subscribe to cult of personality’" (Fortune).

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This commentator argues that Republicans "are blinded by their personal over-the-top, visceral dislike of" Kamala Harris, but also that Democrats have a similar tendency to assume that swing voters share their "revulsion for Trump," which is a "good way to lose," so it's good that Democrats have recently been "channeling" their distate "into an attack [on Project 2025] that poll-tests well and is way more concrete than 'threat to democracy.'"

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I agree with this:



Harris: "There should be serious and swift and severe consequence to crime."

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Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota was not one of the names being suggested over the past two weeks as a possible running mate for Kamala Harris, but as reported earlier in this tread today, he's apparently on the short list. This clip shows he's a good communicator:



He's only six months older than Harris, by the way.

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A Democratic polling firm has found, in the past 48 hours, that Kamala Harris is "seen as too liberal" and "bad on immigration." On the other hand, she is "tied with Trump on lowering prices," and "voters do not hold her accountable for Biden’s perceived failures on inflation," so "she can run hard on economic messaging". They're also tied on "preventing war." Of course, it's still very early in Harris's campaign. It will take time to see what holds up.

On immigration, one pundit suggests that if voters are giving Harris the opportunity to reset, she "should just throw Joe Biden under the bus on immigration: praise the 2024 crackdown but say he was too slow, and say that as the daughter of legal immigrants she knows everyone hates it when people break the rules." Remember that very early in Biden's presidency, Harris gave a speech in which she said she had a message for illegal immigrants: "Do not come."

[N.E. Brigand]

Elie Mystal notes that the New York Times has already published a story titled 'Some Black Voters Say They Wonder if a Black Woman Can Win."

I want you to step back and just marvel at the sheer meaningless of that headline. I, for instance, am a Black voter, and I wonder about a great many things. I wonder if aliens exist; I wonder if God is an asshole; I wonder how many abortions Donald Trump has paid for. But the Times wouldn't run a story that stated "Some Black Voters Say They Wonder How Many Active Ku Klux Klan Members Attended the Republican National Convention"--even though I promise you that more Black voters wonder about that than Harris's electability. What the Times is doing here isn't journalism but confirmation bias: They wanted to run that kind of story and went out and found some people to say what they wanted them to say.

FYI, a 2016 article in The Spectator (a British tabloid) claimed that Donald Trump paid for eight women to have abortions.

[N.E. Brigand]

Hmm: "Elon Musk backs down from $45 million a month pledge to Trump, says he doesn’t ‘subscribe to cult of personality’" (Fortune).

Was Musk's claim about donating $45 million per month to Trump just a ploy to get Trump to pick his preferred running mate, J.D. Vance?

That's an interesting theory, but why then hang Trump and Vance both out to dry?

If Trump loses, I'm not sure Vance has a long career ahead of him.

(Or is Musk's latest move itself a feint. Could he still donate quietly to pro-Trump PACs?)

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Meanwhile, one measure of consumer sentiment has rapidly climbed to a level not reached since early 2020:



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Edited to add: "Trump plans to stop holding outdoor rallies after assassination attempt" (NBC).