Mike Pence. The dog’s had his nose tapped with the newspaper. He’s learned.
Ivanka.
First I’d have to guess if Trump is telling the truth or lying.
If DJT is telling the truth, my guess is a white woman to address his gender gap.
Neither Noem nor Sanders would be a surprise. But both would be bad picks because their states have almost complete abortion bans that would play poorly in swing states. Stefanik is associated with a possible 15 week ban — with rape and incest exceptions — and that’s less politically toxic. Or maybe it’s no political problem at all. So Stefanik would be least surprising.
If Trump is lying, my guess is anyone non-white. I think Trump is capable of picking a non-white, but he’d do it to generate buzz AKA attention AKA surprise.
From what I understand, its JFK Jr - and can’t be anyone else or else the aliens won’t help anymore.
Going back to the thread:
Why did DeSantis drop out?
The usual reason for dropping out is the money running out.
Did that happen here?
Or did DeSantis drop out earlier than he had to in order to ingratiate himself with DJT in hopes of veepdom?
The New York Times dropout story doesn’t really say if he was out of money, although it was getting low.
This hints that veepdom is possible:
Someone mentioned that suspended the campaign means he gets to keep and use the money as he likes.
Here’s a postmortem:
DeSantis’ campaign hired dozens of staffers in the earliest stages of the race, sapping the operation of much-needed early cash. Within the first two months, 40% of initial hires were fired to conserve resources.
A cash-strapped campaign elevated the role of Never Back Down, which promised to spend $200 million boosting his bid but ended up mired in infighting that often spun off negative headlines overshadowing the campaign itself.
A near singular focus on culture war fights cost DeSantis donor support, as many of the biggest anti-Trump GOP donors who originally supported him eventually decided to give to other candidates or sit out the 2024 election cycle.
DeSantis’ decision to wait for six months after his massive re-election win to announce his run for president cost him valuable momentum.
Money was most of the issue. Not just the lack of it but they squandered it and badly mismanaged it, and donors weren’t giving.
Remember Trump has MAGA money and Haley was getting money from the anti-Trump traditional conservative deep pocket folks. DeSantis had nothing. It’s like getting into a shootout without any spare ammo.
Also note that Iowa was “make or break” for Ron. He devoted most of his resources to it and was hoping that if he won there it would give him the momentum he needed to get his campaign into overdrive and he could ride the wave of success into the next primary, and the next, etc. But it was only enough to inch past Haley and he was far behind Trump. It’s like putting most of your money on one spin of the roulette wheel and losing.
That’s what I figure. The VP will have a certain advantage to run as the next president and continue the trump kingdom.
Royalty keeps it in the family. That’s certainly their attitude and they may well be able to sell that to the rubes.
So, is the gap between Haley and Trump closable? I think I saw she is polling about 20 points behind him now, clearly with some of the never-Trump voters from other candidates consolidating with Haley. I know polls are not all that accurate at this point, but it’s heartening to see there are still Republican voters not falling in line with Trump, and if a decent percent of them vote against Trump in the general (either by not voting for President, or voting for Biden), that could be enough to push Biden over the goal line (in some key states) again. I don’t agree with much of what Haley has to say, but I sincerely hope she can hang in there a bit longer to deepen the various schisms within the GOP.
From what I recall reading yesterday, DeSantis was only polling like 6%, most of which should go to Trump but even if all of them west to Haley, she’d still fall short by around 5 points.
She was doing really poorly in SC where she was recently governor. That’s very very troubling.
Maybe. In a profoundly negative and sour worldview, such as all Rs tend to have, it’s real easy to complain about all the shortcomings of politicians you have actual experience with while believing the anodyne BS put out by the politicians you haven’t seen in action. I’d expect most South Carolina Rs to prefer somebody else for that reason.
If she had really been a standout great governor delivering all the good R policies with no miscues or failures that could be trumpeted by hostile media, then yes, I’d expect South Carolina Rs to be real happy with her.
In reality, given the wacky unachievable nature of the R wishlist (lock up all non-whites, abolish the income tax, etc.) of course she fell short of delivering all the goods on time and under budget.
I meant troubling in that Trump is going to handily beat her there and thereafter sail to the nomination. There is no path if she’s trounced in NH and SC.
Yeah. Perhaps I’m defeatist, but from 6 months ago I’ve been assuming trump would sweep every primary and caucus until the RNC simply called the game for futility and had a coronation instead of a convention.
My POV has always been the others were futile from the git-go. Any popularity for them, i.e. primary voter resistance to trump, would be token at best.
I’ve made the same assumption as well. I’m open to be surprised, I was surprised the first time Obama started to gain momentum in the primaries when he ran against Clinton as a relatively unknown senator. I never take anything for granted. But this seemed as sure a thing as it gets until/unless something extremely significant happens (Trump gets convicted and/or has a major health emergency).
Yeah. In the current scenario trump seems uniquely vulnerable to various deus ex machina, but uniquely invulnerable to ordinary politics.
What I’m especially curious to see is which bits of the Reactionary Wacko Traitor propaganda universe line up with trump early versus those who don’t. It’s real unclear to me which way Fox is leaning right now and which way they intend to go. It’ll also be very interesting to see how e.g. Fox reacts if they start out negative but as we approach Nov it’s clear trump is the favorite to win the EC & popular vote.
As has been said, trump is vindictive, but somehow if you toady enough now, that can (in some cases) offset the times before when you were mean to him then.
Gonna be a shitshow for sure.
Were either his fingers or mouth moving?
Trump’s VP pick will be a big surprise.
Maybe it will be Victor Orban. Trump likes him well enough.
He’s from Turkey, right?