2024 USA Election: Wishin' and Hopin'

[filghy2]

And your alternative seems to be anyone but Biden, which is incredibly naive. Biden got elected because he was essentially the ultimate compromise Democrat, and he pretty much remains that.

Nice straw man, but that isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying that if Biden pulled out some viable alternative would most likely emerge. I don't know why it's so hard to understand that what people say and do when Biden is running doesn't necessarily tell us what they would do if he pulled out. Is it news to you that politicians often change their tune when circumstances change?

Anyway, this is hypothetical as he's not going to pull out.

You don't seem to want to acknowledge this, Biden has many more negatives this time. His age is obviously a bigger negative than 4 years ago. He's the incumbent so, rightly or wrongly, he's copping blame for everything that's gone wrong on his watch. Last time he had the advantage of running against the incumbent in the midst of a recession and mass Covid deaths.

Let's not forget that it was a narrow win in electoral college terms. If 43,000 votes in three states had gone the other way Trump would be President. If that had happened, would you be saying now that Biden was the only viable candidate?

If you want to invoke the mid-term result, let me remind you that Democracts actually lost their HoR majority (and lost the popular vote by 2.8%). It only looks like a success compared to expectations of a red wave. It's not clear whether this would translate into an electoral college majority.

Also, don't forget that polling error can go both ways. The polls underestimated Trump's support in both 2016 and 2020.

I know that Trump has many negatives, but so does Biden. I'm not saying Biden can't win, but it looks like 50:50 at best, maybe 45:55. It looks like an election that will depend on which side's former voters are most disillusioned.

[Fitzcarraldo]

You don't seem to want to acknowledge this, Biden has many more negatives this time. His age is obviously a bigger negative than 4 years ago. He's the incumbent so, rightly or wrongly, he's copping blame for everything that's gone wrong on his watch. Last time he had the advantage of running against the incumbent in the midst of a recession and mass Covid deaths.
...

I know that Trump has many negatives, but so does Biden. I'm not saying Biden can't win, but it looks like 50:50 at best, maybe 45:55. It looks like an election that will depend on which side's former voters are most disillusioned.

You're not saying anything everyone doesn't know. I never said Biden was a lock. My comments were about the hypothetical alternative. Reality is what matters. Absent a viable alternative to Biden on the Democratic ticket, hypothetical desires mean nothing. We're into election year now. The primary process has begun. It's too late to mount a new campaign.

It doesn't matter if voters don't want a Biden/Trump rematch. Reality is that's what they're likely to get. We have to deal with reality.

I'm not arguing that Biden will coast to easy victory because everyone loves him and age doesn't matter. I'm saying if it's Biden or Trump, people need to vote for the one who isn't promising to be a dictator (even if he's old).

[Stavros]

Two contrasting views of the New Hampshire result, both in the Brexit paper the Telegraph-

Gingrich as you would expect doesn't much care for the nuances of the vote.
Trump will be the next President. Get over it (yahoo.com)

The other digs into the stats to suggest it is not all over for the Comet, eg

"The results in New Hampshire’s GOP primary on Tuesday night seem to support that and exposed the limits to Mr Trump’s appeal.With more than 90 per cent of votes counted, Mr Trump had won 54.8 per cent to Ms Haley’s 43.2 per cent.

But Ms Haley won self-described moderate voters by a three-to-one margin, according to a CNN exit poll. She won a large majority of voters opposed to a national abortion ban. She also won among college-educated voters, exit polls suggest. All groups that could be crucial in November.

Most worrying of all for Mr Trump, almost half of Republican primary voters - 44 per cent - said the former president would not be fit to re-enter the Oval Office if he is convicted of a crime. Ms Haley won 84 per cent of those voters.

The 52-year-old argues she can build on those numbers, replicating the broad coalition of support she has assembled in the next few states to vote."
Nikki Haley has exposed Trump's weaknesses (yahoo.com)

[Fitzcarraldo]

Forty-eight more states have to weigh in yet. It's really sad that the primary process could be over after the first two rounds.

[filghy2]

The other digs into the stats to suggest it is not all over for the Comet

As I said, you are an incorrigible wishful thinker. New Hampshire is a relatively educated liberal state, and they have open primaries. According to reports, half of those who voted in the Republican primary were not registered Republicans. If Nikki Haley couldn't win there, she has no chance elsewhere.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/man...ll-2024-01-23/

[filghy2]

These are the current betting odds on the Presidency:
Trump 43.6%
Biden 33%
Michelle Obama 7%
Newsom 4.8%
Haley 3.8%
Kennedy 3.4%
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/el...024/president/

Interesting that 23% of betting money is for someone other than Trump or Biden.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Interesting that 23% of betting money is for someone other than Trump or Biden.

Have fun getting 270 electoral votes with 23%.

[filghy2]

More analyis of the New Hamphire primaries here - some bad news for everyone, it seems. Trump - lack of support from independents and moderates; Haley - lack of support from conservatives; Biden - lack of enthusiasm from Democrats.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/0...lysis-00137715

[Fitzcarraldo]

Clearly we're doomed.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Heather Cox Richardson is a historian who offers non-hysterical political commentary. Here's her latest:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substac...anuary-24-2024

Excerpt:

Curiously, what happened to Trump in New Hampshire was what, before the election, pundits suggested could and maybe should happen to President Joe Biden: a challenger would show that he was weak going into the 2024 election.
Instead, despite dirty-trickster robocalls in a fake Biden voice telling Democratic voters not to show up vote for Biden, he appears to be on track to win 65% of the vote as a write-in candidate—he wasn’t on the ballot—while Representative Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson, who were on the ballot, together appear to have garnered just under 25%.
On Monday, Miranda Nazzaro of The Hill reported that the creator of ChatGPT banned a super PAC backing Phillips for misusing AI for political purposes. Billionaire Bill Ackman, who has been in the news lately for his fight against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, attacks on former Harvard president Claudine Gay, and threats to media outlets that pointed out plagiarism in his wife’s doctoral dissertation, donated $1 million to Phillips’s super PAC.
There was other good news for the Biden camp today, too. Sign-ups for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, have surged by 80% under Biden, with a record 21 million people enrolling this year. Trump has promised to get rid of the program, saying that “Obamacare Sucks!!!” and that he will replace it with something better, but neither now nor in his four years in office did he produce a plan.