The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I had to go verify that this was real, even though it has been posted by many people. It is in fact real.



Meanwhile, this is what the Republican governor of Ohio says about Springfield.

[Frelga]

Reportedly near Galveston, TX

[RoseMorninStar]

Trump is hawking/selling (Swift) 'Eras Tour' style T-shirts. So presidential (not). It really shows he is suited and fit to lead EVERYONE in our country (not).

[Frelga]

The Harris campaign does not miss.

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Meanwhile, Swifties for Kamala gave a more succinct statement

20240915_121641.jpg (57 KiB) Viewed 357 times

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And then, conveniently, this happens. Color me skeptical.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, the Daily Show for the win.

[Sunsilver]

Very glad to hear this from Springfield:

[Frelga]

A now deleted tweet from a Trump account (not sure it was his actual account) showed a crying Taylor Swift with the caption that she lost millions of dollars because conservatives... I'm not sure what they were supposed to have done to cause it.

The photo was taken in 2012 after Taylor performed the song Ronan, about a three-year-old boy Ronan, who died from cancer. The tweet got deleted after the boy's mother Maya Thompson responded in shock and sorrow.

[RoseMorninStar]

No stoop too low...

[Túrin Turambar]

Thoughts on the debate with the benefit of five days’ distance.

I’ve heard commentators argue that debates themselves aren’t all that important, but the way they shift the narrative of the campaign is. Not many people actually watch the debate. Or rather, tens of millions do, but they’re often political wonks who’ve been closely following the campaign and have already made up their minds (or, like me, political wonks who can’t even vote in the U.S.). But a story about the debate spreads through the media and the general discourse.

I made a point of watching the debate and writing my thoughts without reading or watching the commentary. I thought Harris did well and Trump did badly, but nothing happened which I thought was highly unexpected (the things Trump says are unexpected, but it’s become so normal for him to say wacky things that it would be unexpected if he didn’t, if that makes sense).

The narrative has now formed. In the same way the second Mondale-Reagan debate became known exclusively for Reagan’s one-liner on his age, the Trump-Harris debate will forever be known for “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats”. Harris made a jab at Trump’s rally size, his ego proved so fragile that he was quickly goaded into an unhinged rant in response, and he proved so terminally-online (or rather, advised by people who are so terminally-online) that he went with the weird right-wing rumour from Twitter which must have left normie audience members scratching their heads.

J. D. Vance has, for reasons known only to himself, decided to make his stand and fight to the end on the pet-eating story, spending five days arguing with people on Twitter about it before finally admitting in an interview it probably wasn’t true but was necessary to provoke debate about immigration. But why not actually talk about people who have been victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants? What in God’s name is he thinking? Why can a random guy in Australia who doesn’t even want the Republicans to win see this when they can’t? Who is running this campaign?

[Frelga]

Some say that Peter Thiel is running this campaign and that his endgame is to elect Trump and then use the 25th to install Vance.

Whether there's such a plot or not, Vance being a heartbeat away from the presidency is a very scary thought.

[Dave_LF]

But is it scarier than Trump being zero away?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Setting aside silly conspiracy theories, there is still a lot of question marks about who is running Trump's campaign. Technically, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles are still the co-campaign managers. However, since Trump brought Cory Lewandowski back there has significant tension between him and them, and it is unclear who is in charge. And, of course, in recent weeks, it appears that Laura Loomer has had an outsized influence on the campaign.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Trafalgar is one of the most right-leaning polling services. For them to have Harris leading in Nevada is very good news.

[Frelga]

But is it scarier than Trump being zero away?

Vance is only 40.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I separated out the posts about the second Trump "assassination attempt"[/color]

[RoseMorninStar]

I guess Taylor Swift responded to Trump's 'I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT' with a short clip of her 'Shake it off' video. (I'm not on Twitter .. or that lesser known social platform so I'm not sure where she responded)

[N.E. Brigand]

JD Vance wants to eliminate health coverage for people with preexisting medical conditions.

He doesn't say that explicitly, in fact he says the opposite, but that's the only possible outcome of his plan to put people into different insurance risk pools based on their health status. The pool with older sicker Americans will collapse!

[Dave_LF]

Might as well just take it to the logical end and put each individual in their own personalized risk pool all by themself, right?

[N.E. Brigand]

Rich Lowry, interviewed here by Megyn Kelly, is the editor of National Review, generally considered the flagship conservative publication.