The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This is a perfect example of how confused people in the U.S. are.



It is, of course, Biden who was responsible for lowering her insulin costs. Trump did take an action that lowered insulin prices for seniors on Medicare Part D (https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-rele ... es-seniors) but it was Biden who capped insulin prices for all Americans who need it (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... 50-states/)

[N.E. Brigand]

TPM: "Inside A Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping For A ‘National Divorce’."

[N.E. Brigand]

Although Sen. Katie Britt floundered with her immigration horror story on Thursday, first because her horrible delivery dominated the news and second because the story turned out to be something that happened 20 years ago, that subject is still a potent tool for Republicans. Donald Trump tonight tried to use it as a wedge to drive the "suburban housewife" vote away from President Biden: "They want something that's very important: security. ... They don't want illegal immigrants knocking on their front door and saying I'm going to use your kitchen or I'm going to use your bedroom and there's not a damn thing-- that's the nice one, OK, that's the nice ones". In other words, Republicans' argument is again: Democrats want to let criminals rape and kill you. The murder of Laken Riley in Georgia adds fuel to this fire. Political analyst Mike Madrid argues that, ridiculous as it might seem, this is a line of attack that might work, and Democrats need to be prepared to counter it forcefully.

Republicans have widely criticized President Biden for referring to Laken Riley as "Lincoln Riley" on Thursday. You may have noticed that he referred to her apparently extemporaneously in response to shouts from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to "say her name" -- and he held up a button Greene had handed him on his way to the podium.

Rep. Greene herself referred to Laken Riley as "Lincoln Riley" in remarks after the speech.

So did Sen. Katie Britt (in separate remarks from the offiical RNC response).

(I've also seen references to Donald Trump making the mistake in his Georgia rally, but haven't been able to check on that yet.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump apparently had some free time this evening:



And yes, Trump really did post about Jimmy Kimmel roughly halfway into the show (about 45 minutes before Kimmel replied in that clip).

Edited to add: I think that most of the audience in the theatre -- who are probably not on Truth Social -- thought at first that Kimmel was just doing a bit, or that the punchline would be that the "review" was written by Oppenheimer star Matt Damon (who has a decades-long mock feud with Kimmel and was the subject of a gag earlier later in the evening) -- right up to the point where Kimmel noted that the review ended with the words "make America great again."

[N.E. Brigand]

Kyle Lewter, who is or was the campaign chair for Alabama State Senator Tom Butler and is the vice chair of his county's Young Republicans chapter, was arrested today for the murder of a 54-year-old man. He's also charged with sexual torture.

[N.E. Brigand]

Asked about funding Social Security and Medicare during a CNBC call-in interview this morning, Donald Trump said:

“So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting".

[N.E. Brigand]

Now that Donald Trump's daughter-in-law Lara is a top role at the Republican National Committe, that organization has announced that some 60 employees are being let go, although some of them can reapply for new jobs. The fired employees include "senior staff in the political, data and communications departments inside the committee's Washington headquarters. The cuts also included staff that ran the committee’s celebrated community centers, which were focused on building relationships with minority groups in some Democratic-leaning states."

I think there's a reasonably good chance there won't even be an RNC a year from now.

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Donald Trump's former Secretary of Homeland Security and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly confirms (in excerpts from a forthcoming book by Jim Sciutto) earlier reports that Trump said that "Hitler did some good things":

[Trump] said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things.’ I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy?” Kelly told the author.

“[Hitler] turned it against his own people and against the world. And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing,’” Kelly went on. “’I mean, Mussolini was a great guy in comparison.’”

Kelly also said that Trump was unaware that some of Hitler's own general staff tried to assassinate him. This was in the context of Trump wishing that American generals were as loyal to him as he believed German generals were to Hitler.

Kelly also says of Trump: "He's not a tough guy by any means, but in fact quite the opposite … But that's how he envisions himself."

[N.E. Brigand]

Republicans have widely criticized President Biden for referring to Laken Riley as "Lincoln Riley" on Thursday. You may have noticed that he referred to her apparently extemporaneously in response to shouts from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to "say her name" -- and he held up a button Greene had handed him on his way to the podium. Rep. Greene herself referred to Laken Riley as "Lincoln Riley" in remarks after the speech. So did Sen. Katie Britt (in separate remarks from the offiical RNC response). I've also seen references to Donald Trump making the mistake in his Georgia rally, but haven't been able to check on that yet.

Oh look, it's Donald Trump posing with a photograph of a murdered woman.

A photograph he autographed.

A photograph labeled "say her name."

A photograph on which he misspelled her name in the dedication. (It should be "Laken" not "Lakan.")

[N.E. Brigand]

President Biden clinched the Democratic nomination at about 7 p.m. last night after early returns showed him winning handily in Georgia last night. He got 95% in that state, and also won in Mississippi (98%) and Washington (87% -- "uncommitted" was second with 8%).

Donald Trump also clinched the Republican nomination last night, a little later in the evening, likewise winning all his contests: Georgia (85%), Mississippi (93%), Washington (74%), and Hawai'i (97%). Washington votes entirely by mail, which favored Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race last week after many ballots in that state had already been posted. Haley did far better in mail-in ballots than election day ballots in Georgia, and her totals approached 50% in some counties near Atlanta.

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Speaking on CNN last night, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, whose district saw high votes for "uncommitted" last week, was asked if she supports President Biden in the November general election; she replied that "of course" she does.

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Various new polls find (1) President Biden's approval rating at its lowest ever and (2) that he trails Donald Trump narrowly, leads Trump narrowly, or is tied with Trump, and also (3) that Congressional Democrats have (barely) regained the lead in the generic House ballot.

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN: "Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has confirmed that among his potential vice-presidential prospects is New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who in private conversations shared deranged conspiracy theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting not being real."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

As that article mentions at the very end, another "top" candidate for his running mate is former wrestler and governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, which would only be a little lower on the scale of crazy.

I find it really remarkable (and disheartening) the polls seem to show that RFK, Jr. would pull more votes away from Biden than Trump.

[Snowdog]

I'm kind of going off on a tangent here...

Was reading through the 2008 Preseidential Election Forum and things were so much simpler and formal and polite back then. Even if you stood opposite on issues, there was still some semblence of respect that was assumed between each other.

All it took to bring down the House of Cards over the next 16 years was to elect a black president. That kicked the bigots' asses and motivated them. It led to the rise of the Tea Party, which morphed into the rise of Trump in 2015 and his election in 2016. The USA lost that November, and I fear there will be no coming back from it. The Supreme Court got pivoted thanks to Mitch and his cronies in the senate, and Trump getting three SCOTUS picks pretty much unchallenged, and the whole 2020-21 reclamation that got derailed by the whole election conspiracy bullshit.. and now the democrats are doing what they do best.... snatch defeat from the jaws of 'victory'[. They should have had some younger alternatives in place, but they hung their hats on Biden making two terms. Sadly, I'm afraid we'll have a Cleveland/Harrison/Cleveland scenario on our hands, and I can't even fathom the damage a 2nd Trump presidency will do... and sadly I see it coming. I have never been this depressed about a presidential election in my life.

Ok... tuning you all back to your regularly-scheduled programming.

[N.E. Brigand]

... and now the Democrats are doing what they do best: snatch defeat from the jaws of 'victory'. They should have had some younger alternatives in place, but they hung their hats on Biden making two terms.

If that's true -- and it might be -- it's equally true of Republicans. The problem with democracy is democracy. By making their nominating processes more democratic and abandoning the old model of selecting the nominees in a smoke-filled room at the summer convention, the major parties have made it all but impossible to replace the person who gets the most votes in the primaries. Those two people this year are Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They both won their nominations fair and square. (Yes one of them is a monster who should spend the rest of his days behind bars. But while he legally if immorally schemed to keep his trials from happening during this election year and might yet succeed at that ploy, he didn't cheat his way to the nomination.) There are plenty of younger alternatives to whom Democrats could have turned, like California's governor Gavin Newsom. But Newsom didn't run. Why? Because he didn't think he could beat Joe Biden for the nomination. There were some Republican alternatives who would have been credible in any past election, but Trump didn't even bother to show up at their debates, and they spent most of their efforts attacking one another and saying little about him.

And there are no "party elders" who can force a sitting president (or a quasi-incumbent like Trump) out of the race. No one is in charge. And if someone were in charge, there would just be complaints that no one elected that someone. Just look back to 2016, when the DNC's very weak leadership took some very mild steps to make it harder for someone who wasn't even a member of their party, Bernie Sanders, to win their nomination. Never mind that nothing they did made more than the tiniest difference. The public was outraged! And their outrage probably helped the third-party candidacy of Jill Stein, whose vote share in November 2016 was enough in some states to cost Hillary Clinton the victory over Trump.

[N.E. Brigand]

A Democratic PAC is airing ads to boost Bernie Moreno's chance of becoming the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Ohio. That nominee will face Sen. Sherrod Brown in November. Brown won narrowly six years ago. This will be the toughest campaign of his career. Moreno is the Trumpiest of the three major Republican challengers, and apparently Democrats think that makes him the easiest to beat. They're airing ads calling him too right-wing for this state. As with other such efforts, I don't see this as an unfair trick. The ads are absolutely correct: he is the worst candidate. That this knowledge might win the favor of Republican voters is a stain on those voters, not on the people telling them the truth. However, it is risky! Matt Dolan or even Frank LaRose may have a better chance of beating Brown, but they're also a little less extreme.* If the Republican should win in November, please don't let it be Moreno.

*LaRose was the leader of the highly anti-democratic effort to change Ohio's constitution last summer. In my opinion, that makes him beneath contempt too.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump four years ago today: sniffing as usual as he declared a national emergency (which he called "two very big words"), saying the coronavirus would "wash through" and be done in "a matter of weeks," doubting that the U.S. would "need anywhere near" the five million testing kits that were in production, and arguing that it was "nasty" for reporters to ask why he previously had disbanded the White House pandemic task force:

[River]

Four years ago today I was basically sheltering in place because of a rampant virus. Today I am basically sheltering in place because there's over a foot of snow on the ground. The latter will get plowed within the next 24 hours and either melt or sublimate off in the coming days. The former is still with us, though nowhere near as dangerous as it used to be. So yeah, I'm better off than I was four years ago.

[N.E. Brigand]

Four years ago today, the day after then-President Donald Trump declared a national emergency to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, he tweeted various all-caps non-sequitur messages, including this one: "BIGGEST STOCK MARKET RISE IN HISTORY YESTERDAY!"

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN: "The Republican nominee for superintendent overseeing North Carolina’s public schools and its $11 billion budget...

has a history marked by extreme and controversial comments, including sharing baseless conspiracy theories and frequent calls for the execution of prominent Democrats. Michele Morrow, a conservative activist who last week upset the incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction in North Carolina’s Republican primary, expressed support in 2020 for the televised execution of former President Barack Obama and suggested killing then-President-elect Joe Biden.

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A new poll here in Ohio finds the incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown narrowly leading all three potential Republican challengers, but with many undecided.

[N.E. Brigand]

A Democratic PAC is airing ads to boost Bernie Moreno's chance of becoming the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Ohio. That nominee will face Sen. Sherrod Brown in November. Brown won narrowly six years ago. This will be the toughest campaign of his career. Moreno is the Trumpiest of the three major Republican challengers, and apparently Democrats think that makes him the easiest to beat. They're airing ads calling him too right-wing for this state. As with other such efforts, I don't see this as an unfair trick. The ads are absolutely correct: he is the worst candidate. That this knowledge might win the favor of Republican voters is a stain on those voters, not on the people telling them the truth. However, it is risky! Matt Dolan or even Frank LaRose may have a better chance of beating Brown, but they're also a little less extreme.* If the Republican should win in November, please don't let it be Moreno.

*LaRose was the leader of the highly anti-democratic effort to change Ohio's constitution last summer. In my opinion, that makes him beneath contempt too.

Not Matt Schlapp.

AP: "Trump-backed Senate candidate faces GOP worries that he could be linked to adult website profile."

But ahead of Tuesday’s primary election, there’s mounting anxiety inside the GOP that Bernie Moreno may emerge with the nomination. After vaulting into the top tier of contenders with a coveted endorsement from Donald Trump, Moreno — who has shifted from a public supporter of LGBTQ rights to a hardline opponent — is confronting questions about the existence of a 2008 profile seeking “Men for 1-on-1 sex” on a casual sexual encounters website called Adult Friend Finder.

“Hi, looking for young guys to have fun with while traveling,” reads a caption on a photo-less profile under the username “nardo19672,” according to an Associated Press review of records made public through a massive and well-publicized data breach of the website. Records also show the profile was last accessed about six hours after it was created.

The AP review confirmed that someone with access to Moreno’s email account created the profile, though the AP could not definitively confirm whether it was created by Moreno himself. Questions about the profile have circulated in GOP circles for the past month. On Thursday evening, two days after the AP first asked Moreno’s campaign about the account, the candidate’s lawyer said a former intern created the account as a prank. The lawyer provided a statement from the intern, Dan Ricci, who said he created the account as “part of a juvenile prank.”

Obviously the worst thing here is the part I have underlined, but that's the only part that many Republican voters will like. His car dealership sponsored the Gay Games when they were in Cleveland in 2014, and he even wrote an op-ed supporting that event. And his son is gay. But since first running for office in 2021, he has attacked gay rights.

(Edited to remove extra boldface. Sorry about that.)

[N.E. Brigand]

On CNN today, Donald Trump's 2017-21 Vice President, Mike Pence, said he would not be endorsing Trump in this year's election.