The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[N.E. Brigand]

The delivery is a little stiff, but I think it still lands:

[N.E. Brigand]

Al Pacino and Jimmy Kimmel are two different people.

(Donald Trump is still worked up about this, perhaps because of this.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Kerry Kennedy, a human rights activist who is the younger sister of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., today endorsed President Biden's reelection.

In this, she was joined by another 14 members of the Kennedy family.

[N.E. Brigand]

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, explains how she can support President Biden in the 2024 election in spite of strong differences with Biden on policy, notably as regards the U.S. support for Israel during the war with Hamas. She says that Donald Trump "seeks to dismantle American democracy" and that "we will not be able to organize for any movement ... if we are facing the jailing of dissidents" which "is the kind of authoritarianism that he [Trump] threatens."



Of course the replies are full of people saying that Biden and the Democrats need to be taught a lesson in 2024. Those people are just not taking seriously the possibility that Trump won't let them vote in 2028!

[N.E. Brigand]

The risk of severe weather forced Donald Trump to cancel a campaign rally in North Carolina last night about a half-hour before he was due to speak (after his supporters had been there for hours). Earlier in the day, some Proud Boys were seen there calling for the release of January 6th insurrectionists.

- - - - - - - - - -
A pro-Trump activist was at the rally collecting signatures to put independent candidate Cornel West on the ballot in North Carolina. This activist was explicit that his goal was to pull votes from President Biden.

Remember, back in 2015, West tweeted that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump alone among presidential candidates were "authentic."

- - - - - - - - - -
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, trying to downplay the risk that Trump plays to democracy, falsely says that Hillary Clinton didn't concede her 2016 loss.

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The head of the Border Patrol agents' union is disappointed that the House passed a foreign aid bill that doesn't include funding for the U.S.-Mexico border. He doesn't not mention -- but Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, helpfully did on Fox three days agao -- that there was such a package until Donald Trump tanked it earlier this year.

(Edited to fix another typo.)

[RoseMorninStar]

This is ... I don't even know what to call it, extortion? Politico: Trump campaign asks for cut of candidates’ fundraising when they use his name and likeness

From the Trump teams letter:

(...)Beginning tomorrow, we ask that all candidates and committees who choose to use President
Trump's name, image, and likeness split a minimum of 5% of all fundraising solicitations to
Trump National Committee JFC. This includes but is not limited to sending to the house file,
prospecting vendors, and advertising.
Any split that is higher than 5% will be seen favorably by the RNC and President Trump's
campaign and is routinely reported to the highest levels of leadership within both organizations9...)

The letter goes into specifics.

[Frelga]

That sounds like a mafia shakedown. Is that normal for a political campaign?

And what does JFC mean? In this context.

[RoseMorninStar]

That sounds like a mafia shakedown. Is that normal for a political campaign?

And what does JFC mean? In this context.

LOL!! JFC... OMG.. hilarious. It means Joint Fundraising Committee, but all of the money goes to Trump. And no, NONE of that is normal. Usually funds raised by the Republican committee is spread out among candidates, not to mention the shake-down from down ballot candidates.

Trump SHOULD be looking at it as free advertising/campaigning because down ballot people/local races don't have as much to gain as he does.

[N.E. Brigand]

Polls mostly continue to show Donald Trump leading President Biden, although the margin seems to be tightening. These are the most recent polls listed at 538.com:

Apr. 14 -- Biden 49% vs. Trump 46% (Echelon)
Apr. 14 -- Biden 41% vs. Trump 40% vs. Kennedy 11% vs. West 2% vs. Stein 2% (Echelon)
Apr. 14 -- Trump 44% vs. Biden 42% (Morning Consult)
Apr. 15 -- Tie: Trump 42% vs. Biden 42% (YouGov/Yahoo)
Apr. 16 -- Trump 49% vs. Biden 45% (McLaughlin)
Apr. 16 -- Trump 38% vs. Biden 36% vs. Kennedy 10% (McLaughlin)
Apr. 16 -- Trump 46% vs. Biden 44% vs. Kennedy 1% (Hart/NBC)
Apr. 16 -- Biden 39% vs. Trump 37% vs. Kennedy 13% vs. Stein 3% vs. West 2% (Hart/NBC)
Apr. 16 -- Trump 45% vs. Biden 44% (Civiqs/Daily Kos)
Apr. 16 -- Tie: Trump 44% vs. Biden 44% vs. Kennedy 3% vs. West 1% (YouGov/Economist)
Apr. 17 -- Tie: Trump 42% vs. Biden 42% (Morning Consult)
Apr. 17 -- Trump 52% vs. Biden 49% (Emerson)
Apr. 17 -- Trump 44% vs. Biden 40% vs. Kennedy 8% vs. West 1% (Emerson)
Apr. 22 -- Biden 51% vs. Trump 48% (Marist)
Apr. 22 -- Biden 43% vs. Trump 38% vs. Kennedy 14% vs. West 2% vs. Stein 2% (Marist)

As you can see, Kennedy mostly but not always takes more votes from Biden than from Trump.

[N.E. Brigand]

Celebrity endorsements don't mean much, but the actor Michael Douglas (who once played the U.S. president and currently portrays Benjamin Franklin in a TV miniseries) makes a good point on CNN: it appears that every member of President Biden's cabinet supports him while very few members of Donald Trump's former cabinet support him.

[N.E. Brigand]

RFK Jr. today: "I'm gonna put the entire U.S. budget on blockchain."

[RoseMorninStar]

RFK Jr. today: "I'm gonna put the entire U.S. budget on blockchain."

Headline from above link:

RFK Jr. Wants To Put The U.S. Budget On Blockchain, 'If Somebody Is Spending $16k For A Toilet Seat, Everyone's Going To Know About It'

Perhaps a golden toilet seat?

[Sunsilver]

Okay, had to google that:

Blockchain technology is an advanced database mechanism that allows transparent information sharing within a business network. A blockchain database stores data in blocks that are linked together in a chain.

[N.E. Brigand]

Okay, had to google that: Blockchain technology is an advanced database mechanism that allows transparent information sharing within a business network. A blockchain database stores data in blocks that are linked together in a chain.

It's also the technology that makes cryptocurrency possible.

In the abstract, RFK Jr.'s proposal is not completely nonsense: it could increase transparency in government spending. But three immediate concerns come to mind: (1) the government needs to keep some transactions secret for national security reasons; (2) blockchain technology requires enormous amounts of electricity; and (3) setting up blockchain to monitor all of the governments (non-classified) purchases would cost a huge sum of money.

[N.E. Brigand]

Republicans seem to have convinced themselves that Donald Trump never suggested in 2020 that injecting disinfectant into people's bodies might be a way to stop Covid, but he really did: "And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Cause you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number in the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you`re going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me."

It was four years ago today that Donald Trump said that:



Grim times, to be sure, but I remember smiling at this version.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sarah Cooper!

[N.E. Brigand]

I was just polled, mostly about the Ohio Senate race, via a call to my cell phone. I think it was by a Republican-leaning firm. I wasn't sure at first. There were lots of questions about supposed bad things that both Sen. Sherrod Brown and Bernie Moreno have done, but while there were questions about how I would vote in light of Moreno's campaign promises, there were none about Brown's campaign promises. We hear lots of comments about how pollsters get fewer responses than they need to get an accurate picture. My big takeaway from this experience is that the likely reason is that polling takes too long. I was answering questions for 26 minutes!

[RoseMorninStar]

I never answer the phone if I don't know who is calling. I don't answer for several reasons; One, yes polling takes too long. Two, there is no way to know if it is a legitimate call or if it is someone voice phishing/cloning. Three, there is usually some question 20 minutes in which I refuse to answer, such as a question about household income which invalidates the poll.

I agree that polling in this era is a problem.

* edited to add left out word.

[N.E. Brigand]

Eric Hovde is a hedge fund manager who is the leading Republican candidate vying to challenge Tammy Baldwin (the incumbent Democrat) to be a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. Hovde ran for the same office in 2012 but has lived in California about as much as Wisconsin over the dozen years since. Also he struggled today to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, although he might defend his performance by arguing that he was merely skipping between the current and pre-1954 versions of the pledge.

[Frelga]

Last time I agreed to be polled, they asked how favorably I felt toward Arnold Schwarzenegger running for governor in California. I was laughing so hard, I barely managed to hang up on those pranksters.

Little did I know.