2024 Elections Thread

[Sun_Worshiper]

I know we are all looking forward to this election about as much as our next colonoscopy, but it is happening and we're going to have to talk about it sooner or later so...

How do you think this will play out? Will Biden stay in the race? Will swing voters be more concerned about Biden's age or Trump's criminal convictions? How will Kennedy and other third-party candidates affect the results? What down-ballot races are you watching?

Most importantly, are you seeing this election as an existential threat to the country or politics as usual?

[Langue_doc]

I know we are all looking forward to this election about as much as our next colonoscopy, but it is happening and we're going to have to talk about it sooner or later so...

How do you think this will play out? Will Biden stay in the race? Will swing voters be more concerned about Biden's age or Trump's criminal convictions? How will Kennedy and other third-party candidates affect the results? What down-ballot races are you watching?

Most importantly, are you seeing this election as an existential threat to the country or politics as usual?

Did you watch last night's Daily Show?

[Sun_Worshiper]

I know we are all looking forward to this election about as much as our next colonoscopy, but it is happening and we're going to have to talk about it sooner or later so...

How do you think this will play out? Will Biden stay in the race? Will swing voters be more concerned about Biden's age or Trump's criminal convictions? How will Kennedy and other third-party candidates affect the results? What down-ballot races are you watching?

Most importantly, are you seeing this election as an existential threat to the country or politics as usual?

Did you watch last night's Daily Show?

Can't say that I did. Anything insightful?

I didn't watch the debate either. But can't avoid the avalanche of reaction and panic in the newspapers today.

[Langue_doc]

@Sun_Worshipper--I didn't watch the debate, as I didn't think it would be worth my time. But here's Jon Stewart on the debate. If the link doesn't work, just google "The Daily Show Jon Stewart", and the link should pop up. All you need is the first 15 minutes. I'm in the middle of a long email to my congressman who I like and respect very much.

I didn't watch the debate either. But can't avoid the avalanche of reaction and panic in the newspapers today.

There are vey good reasons for these reactions. I think the NYT has more than one op ed about getting Biden to withdraw.

[Sun_Worshiper]

@Sun_Worshipper--I didn't watch the debate, as I didn't think it would be worth my time. But here's Jon Stewart on the debate. If the link doesn't work, just google "The Daily Show Jon Stewart", and the link should pop up. All you need is the first 15 minutes. I'm in the middle of a long email to my congressman who I like and respect very much.

I didn't watch the debate either. But can't avoid the avalanche of reaction and panic in the newspapers today.

There are vey good reasons for these reactions. I think the NYT has more than one op ed about getting Biden to withdraw.

I'll check the Daily Show clip out later.

Biden withdrawing seems like a recipe for disaster for the Dems, but so is Biden running... Hard to say which would be worse.

[Parasaurolophus]

The debate was an unmitigated catastrofuck.

Biden will not be stepping aside or down. Doing so at this juncture would be electoral suicide for Democrats. Calls for him to do so will ease off in a couple of weeks. He might still limp to the finish, but if so it will be despite himself.

He was never a good campaigner. He was never an ideas man. He was always a bad candidate. And he was clearly on thin cognitive ice four years ago, despite all the gaslighting we've been given up until last night (and which we're being fed again this morning). But he's the one you've got. It's possible to recover from this over the next four months, but he can't afford a public répétition.

[treeoflife]

If Biden steps down there is no clear and immediate replacement.

[Ruralguy]

Technically there isn't, but my guess is that Biden would only step down (from running again) *if* everyone would agree on one clear candidate for the convention (probably Harris).

But for those who didn't see it, it was very very bad. For those who recall Admiral Stockdale, it was almost that bad. He got a bit better in the end, but to me it seemed like too little too late, though getting into the Trump bating after all of that middle school bullshit Trump pulled probably made Biden look a bit worse than he would have had he been stronger before that point.

I won't demand he withdraw, but it might be best, if there's a clear path forward. Since there's a high chance that there is not a clear path with a clear new candidate, I can see Biden sticking with it, but in the end, it really really was very close to the worst performance I've seen, and THE WORST from a presidential candidate as opposed to the two 1992 VP folks, Stockdale and Quayle who looked pretty bad (not that it hurt Quayle much...at least not at that juncture).

[dismalist]

I have some memories of the Kennedy-Nixon debate, which I saw on television [mind you] at the age of ten. It was all about policy! Substance! Analysis! That was also the last debate I saw. But it's hard to miss the shitshow today.

Both politicians and the media know what they're doing. Quality has gone down because the median television viewer has gone down in quality. As usual, the problem is us.

[Parasaurolophus]

I have seen one worse debate performance. It was for the Conservative Party leadership in Canada in either 2020 or 2022 (they've blended together so I don't recall which).

It was the French-language debate. Something like 9 candidates were on stage, of which 1.5 spoke any French at all. One guy just kept shouting out the URL to his website--in English. It was not just the most dismal, but also the most disrespectful (to voters) debate I have ever had the horror to watch.

This was better, but not by much. Between Trump's Gish gallop of lies, Biden's buffering épisodes, his horror show abortion segment (in which he both said [male] doctors should decide and agreed that they rip babies out at nine months and kill them when the mother's life is in danger), then the penis measuring about golf scores and the juvenile and ineffectual guessing at Trump's weight... Yeah, it wasn't much better.

[dismalist]

I have some memories of the Kennedy-Nixon debate, which I saw on television [mind you] at the age of ten. It was all about policy! Substance! Analysis! That was also the last debate I saw. But it's hard to miss the shitshow today.

Both politicians and the media know what they're doing. Quality has gone down because the median television viewer has gone down in quality. As usual, the problem is us.

There is a structural problem. We are not all boobs.

Used to be that state party nominating delegations hashed something out and went to the convention. Of course, there were a few states with primaries, and these few primaries produced information. The bosses in the smoke filled rooms took account of this information along with other information. I say information and not just preferences because the bosses wanted to win!

Then came '68! More democracy! Primaries everywhere one looks! But who votes in primaries? Ideologues, madmen, vegetarians, and other similarly situated people. We don't get two candidates close to one side of the median voter, but two candidates close to the median of each party.

So here we are.

[Sun_Worshiper]

I have some memories of the Kennedy-Nixon debate, which I saw on television [mind you] at the age of ten. It was all about policy! Substance! Analysis! That was also the last debate I saw. But it's hard to miss the shitshow today.

Both politicians and the media know what they're doing. Quality has gone down because the median television viewer has gone down in quality. As usual, the problem is us.

There is a structural problem. We are not all boobs.

Used to be that state party nominating delegations hashed something out and went to the convention. Of course, there were a few states with primaries, and these few primaries produced information. The bosses in the smoke filled rooms took account of this information along with other information. I say information and not just preferences because the bosses wanted to win!

Then came '68! More democracy! Primaries everywhere one looks! But who votes in primaries? Ideologues, madmen, vegetarians, and other similarly situated people. We don't get two candidates close to one side of the median voter, but two candidates close to the median of each party.

So here we are.

That is valid criticism in general of the state of American democracy, but not really the problem in the Biden context. He could easily have been picked in a smoke filled room in 2020 - in fact, some would say that is essentially what happened.

[dismalist]

I have some memories of the Kennedy-Nixon debate, which I saw on television [mind you] at the age of ten. It was all about policy! Substance! Analysis! That was also the last debate I saw. But it's hard to miss the shitshow today.

Both politicians and the media know what they're doing. Quality has gone down because the median television viewer has gone down in quality. As usual, the problem is us.

There is a structural problem. We are not all boobs.

Used to be that state party nominating delegations hashed something out and went to the convention. Of course, there were a few states with primaries, and these few primaries produced information. The bosses in the smoke filled rooms took account of this information along with other information. I say information and not just preferences because the bosses wanted to win!

Then came '68! More democracy! Primaries everywhere one looks! But who votes in primaries? Ideologues, madmen, vegetarians, and other similarly situated people. We don't get two candidates close to one side of the median voter, but two candidates close to the median of each party.

So here we are.

That is valid criticism in general of the state of American democracy, but not really the problem in the Biden context. He could easily have been picked in a smoke filled room in 2020 - in fact, some would say that is essentially what happened.

Yes, and he won in 2020 in, IIRC, a more elegant version of the smoke filled room. There has been no smoke filled room this election year.

[kaysixteen]

Hmmm.... wrt the Canadian Conservative party leadership debates, and candidates' incompetence in French speaking-- why exactly is it, in a country where both languages are official, that a party leader-cum-would be PM, actually needs to speak both of these languages?  And two further questions: 1) roughly what percentage of Quebecois politicians outside of the Greater Montreal area, could competently debate in English?  and, 2) for those Anglocanadians raised in areas outside of the province of Quebec, in what are often, near as I can figure, essentially monolingual Anglophone environments, both familial and community-wide, how common would it be that the Canadian equivalent of k-12 ed provides an Anglophone child effective opportunity to develop French-language skills sufficient to debate in that language?

[kaysixteen]

Another question, for those who know American political realities more than I: in all the political discussions wrt the upcoming prez election I have read/ heard, whether in righty/lefty/centrist sources, everyone seems to be asking the question of which swing/purple states that Biden won could Trump retake, and perhaps which swing states that Trump won that Biden could take now (though I have heard very very few of these latter states discussed)-- but is anyone seriously contemplating the possibility that there may be any heretofore red or blue, as opposed to purple, states, that might flip this year?