The next President should turn Trump over to the Hague, but they shouldn’t advertise before the election that they’ll do that.
IMHO he lacks experience. Mayor of a medium sized city and one of the lesser cabinet doesnt cut it. I hope he runs for Senator or Governor. Same with AOC. I think they both have some charisma.
BTW- it is generally thought that a person cant not pardon themselves.
Actually I think every US President has successfully not pardoned themself.
I am OK with them saying that, and they probably will.
What none have done is to call for the prosecution of an individual, and I hope it continues.
As an indirect test, I put this question to a few AI’s:
The answer is no, and, I feel. properly so.
Quite. Take an example from him, DON’T promise a war, deliver one /s
But hey, look, he COULD have been taken down before except that USDOJ and the Atlanta DA decided to treat him as a common white-collar crook instead of as leader of an ongoing sedition.
If he pardons himsel federally of sny charge whatsoever, charge him in a state. For whatever is valid.
And there’s the small detail that to pass him to The Hague the new Admin would have to first have the USA recognize ICC jurisdiction over US officials. Which the US never ratified, and rejects. Good luck getting THAT past a filibuster, Mr. One-termer.
“Will you lay low every law to punish (Trump)?”
No, we must actually acknowledge the rules. It’s avoiding punishing Trump that lays the rules low.
And the next Democratic senate should eliminate the filibuster, for everything, as its first order of business.
Create an ad hoc tribunal. It worked at Nuremberg. At the rate things are going Trump’s approval rating will be in the low teens by 2028. It’s a winning proposition for the first candidate who endorses it.
Nobody cares about “charisma.” You’re still stuck in running Reagan v. Carter. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.
In a Democratic primary, both Buttigieg and AOC have such obvious liabilities that for them to even run is just an influence game where they decide what they can get by endorsing someone when they drop out. They have no path to victory with the primary voting base.
In a general election, you will not con people into voting for a platform they don’t like by getting someone who talks slickly enough or has a strong enough hairline or whatever “charisma” is supposed to mean. People in this thread keep saying that’s not what they mean when challenged on it, then going right back to making 50 posts showing they obviously do mean that.
The era when “charisma” or personal characteristics mattered has been gone for generations and is not coming back. You have to change people’s minds on issues and there seems to be no plan to do that.
If I am following you correctly, what you are saying is essentially this:
Until the Democrats eject the woke anti-white man elements from the platform and party, it doesn’t matter how slick the nominee is. They will always lose that chunk of white America that’s crucial for victory .
Not necessarily. They won the presidency in 2020 at the peak of “woke” and have managed to win lots of competitive governor and Senate races over the past decade. Biden ran on some pretty basic economic points as well as distancing himself from the pro-crime wing of the party that was making a bid for power that summer. All of that helped, though it was a very tight race and produced such a slim majority that Biden ended up captured by the progressives on some pretty unpopular issues because he couldn’t afford to alienate anyone in the coalition, and then a few other things (like the absolutely ridiculous person he was forced to take on as VP being the only legally possible replacement nominee by the time he agreed to drop out) came back to bite them in 2024.
But basically, the current Democratic coalition, on the national level, can’t really get past a 48 to 48 percent dead heat with Republicans and is just going to perpetually alternate power based on how swing voters feel about the economy unless something changes. And there’s a real danger that, just as much as Trump coming off the scene will remove his personal loyalists from the Republican rolls, his replacement by someone who doesn’t seem as obviously insane will give centrists permission to vote Republican again.
Fixing the perception that Democrats hate 36% of the electorate, which is largely based on many prominent Democrats saying they do, is not “the only way for them to win” but it is probably the “best way for them to build a reliable majority.”
And it’s not just white men who are voting based on their perception of what the candidates are actually going to do policy-wise, it’s everyone, and Democrats are way, way behind their opponents in understanding that in all its manifestations. Why did half of Hispanic voters choose Trump in 2024? Most Democrats cannot wrap their head around “Trump is racist against Hispanics so they shouldn’t vote for him but they did, does not compute.” A few of the more perceptive ones understand “sometimes minorities are socially conservative.” The reality - that most of Trump’s Hispanic supporters don’t like Trump’s ICE and wish immigration enforcement was rolled back significantly, but voted based on concerns about taxes and crime because identity politics issues simply aren’t their #1 priority - is incomprehensible to Democratic campaign staffers.
Thanks for the extensive reply. I’m not sure I agree with all of it, but it does give me the idea.
I am curious, would you consider yourself a centrist who is waiting for Trump to leave to vote Republican again? Or has it been the rise of the woke left that would drive you to support gop and try to modify it to march your values? In other words, do you think it’s easier for a voter like you to sway the Democrats or the Republicans to align with your values?
I voted for one Republican in my life, for the Senate, which I came to regret. Given the actual political strains that exist in America I think “normal Democrats who are wary of the dangers of leftism” is by far the least bad option and I vote for them when they are available. I even would have voted for Sanders over Trump, who has proven to be as uniquely dangerous as I predicted, and did in fact vote for Kamala over him despite her being a complete fucking idiot (as well as for Clinton and Biden who were fine, political platform wise).
It’s pretty obvious that Democrats are in a perpetual battle to remain the “sanity party” when their insane/saboteur wing is always trying to make its move. Biden v Trump is a really easy decision in terms of who is going to be better for American interests and economic stability. Rashida Tlaib versus Mitt Romney would be another story entirely on that set of criteria. The nightmare scernario for the Democrats is Trump being replaced by “normal” or seemingly normal people in a year when their own crazy wing seizes control of the nomination.
The thing is, we want a return to normalcy, but from where we are, we won’t get to normalcy by electing normal politicians. The past few decades have been the Republicans swinging the country hard right, alternating with Democrats stabilizing the country where it is and (temporarily) preventing further degradation. It’s a ratchet. But if we want to not just slow the damage but actually reverse it, we need to make extreme moves leftwards.
I don’t disagree with you in principle, but I worry that any candidate advertising an extreme move leftwards keeps the White House in GOP hands.
I think the winning message in 2028 is “I’m going to roll back the extremism and that’s it.” Not ideal, but I think that message can get 271 and that’s what matters. The Presidential nominee and the Senate candidates should push that message and let the Rep candidates push the hard left line where they can, the rest should push the less radical line.
With all that said, the party apparatus should be at least as equally focused on city, county, and state-level elections. Let’s rebuild the base.
In a way, I agree with this. But winning supermajorities is close to impossible. And Trump’s racism is making such repudiation even more of a deal-breaker with Democratic primary voters than in the past. If Democrats can get bare majorities, they will be doing as well as can be hoped.
As seen below, we already tried that. It IMHO was mostly a good idea, but doing it again in 2028 seems to me both unlikely and a mistake. See:
“Vote for me and I’ll fix things” was the Biden platform, and it certainly didn’t deliver long-term satisfaction. We can’t stay stuck in the same rhythm of “Republicans break everything, Democrats get elected to fix it, people blame Democrats for not fixing everything fast enough and vote in Republicans again” pattern that’s been repeating since the end of the Reagan era. We need an FDR.
I think the winning message is to promise to roll back tariffs and cut inflation, to forge trade deals to help grow the economy and create jobs, and to return to enforcing border controls at the border, and to arrest the dangerous immigrants, being careful to check id to get the right people. And to end the war in Iran.
But mostly to increase jobs and cut inflation.
I don’t really think that’s true on any level. A couple decades ago, there was no gay marriage and mainstream society was barely even aware of the existence of trans people, let alone taking steps to accommodate them. A couple decades ago, a politician openly identifying as a Socialist (even a Democratic Socialist) would have been complete career suicide.
There’s been some return rightward in the last single decade, since 2016, but both the trend and the net movement in my lifetime has been to the left, not the right.
Exactly this. I don’t see how you can possibly claim we’ve moved rightward since Obama, much less “the last couple decades”.
He changed his position on that pretty fast.
This seems to be false.
Obama was pro-choice. Mind you, most everyone supports some limits on abortion, like not in the 3rd trimester unless medical issues.
That article was short on cites and facts. Mind you yes, in 2008 Obama was pro civil Union and wavering on Gay marriage.