I feel if it’s a contest between Biden and Trump, Biden will win again. If it’s a contest between Biden and DeSantis, DeSantis will win. Unless it’s a contest between Biden and DeSantis and Trump runs as an independent or otherwise inserts himself into the election, in which case Biden wins.
Me too. Stand-up guy.
I’ve got this total dreaded feeling, like that old 80’s “Wonder Twins Power – Activate!” cartoon, that Trump is gonna run, and anoint DeSantis as his VP. I don’t know how we combat the “enthusiasm” that that would drum up, but maybe in two years another President Obama will come out of nowhere.
I don’t know how I (a lifelong Texan) can try and drum up more support for Katie Porter than I already have (other than sending her $20 every couple years) but we gotta figure out something between now and 2024.
I saw this previously-recorded short video on SNL a couple weeks ago, and it seemed to sum up the overall theme of this thread.
I’d personally love to see Hillary beat the disgraced host of The Apprentice again by 3 million in the popular vote, only this time for her to win the right mix/match in the electoral vote.
If DeSantis becomes the nominee, then there is little chance of Trump falling in goosestep behind him like other Republicans. He just isn’t built that way. It is hard to say if he would run as an independent. He doesn’t like to lose, and running as an independent is expensive if you want to make a serious go at it. On the other hand, he is in some serious legal jeopardy, and running for and being president is the only thing that will protect him. Especially if he continues to burn bridges with the GOP that really (I don’t think) want Trump personally around. They don’t like him because he’s outspokenly vile as opposed to only inwardly vile, but they sure do like the votes that he brings.
While I certainly share the concerns about future vote rigging and suppression in areas under GOP control (looking at you, Wisconsin), I don’t see Trump as the favorite in 2024. He was discouraged from announcing his candidacy before the current election because Republican strategists are very aware of the negative feelings he causes among an already motivated Democratic base.
Holy smokes, what a bunch of pessimistic predictions! DJT isn’t some sort of James Bond supervillain, he’s an addle-pated two bit conman who has about 25% of the electorate thinking he’s the messiah. Trouble for him is that maybe 40% of the electorate sees him for what he is and wouldn’t vote for him for dogcatcher. He’ll announce a run in a couple weeks just to see if that will stave off an indictment but it will be in vain.
DeSantis is my big worry, just as evil as DJT but with a triple digit IQ. Sure, Republicans will fall behind him as they always do, but he’s not going to fill stadiums or get people to buy his cheap merchandise, he hasn’t got nearly as much charisma as The Slobfather. He’ll get the nomination but lose to…
Joe Biden. He’s as dull as a rusted knife, but he’s a cool head at the wheel. We’ll have to find someone else for 2028, but until someone better is found I’m with Joe.
I don’t understand the fear of Trump that so many people have. From what I can see, he’s the weakest candidate the Republicans have had in the last forty years.
Yes, he got “elected” in 2016 but that’s because the Republicans have spend years setting up a system that favors any Republican candidate. And even with that, they could barely carry Trump across the finish line.
Four years later, the Republicans had to contend with Trump’s abysmal record as President and he had sunk too low for them to save him. Having seen what he was like as President, people turned out in record numbers to vote against him. And that was all before he tried to overthrow the American government.
Trump’s political career is over. He has as much chance of getting elected President in the future as Dick Cheney or Newt Gingrich has. The only difference is people like Cheney and Gingrich are smart enough to know their careers are over and Trump’s too dumb.
We need to stop worrying about Trump and start worrying about somebody like DeSantis, who will work with Republican machine rather than screwing it up.
The electorate does not want a cool head at the wheel. They want a showman, a smooth talker, someone who will promise them that they will get a pony and a circus. They want toys. They want the freedom to tell others what to do.
They’ll blame Biden for everything from the wart on their big toe to their rent going up. A significant portion of the American public would dearly love to have Putin in charge forever.
Well a great many of us didn’t think there was any way he could beat Hilary and were totally surprised it happened. How could someone who slurred war veterans, Hispanics and believed in grabbing strange women’s pussies along with lots of other crazy stuff possibly win? And in his re-election campaign against Biden considering the massive number of dead and the massive economic hit from Covid and all the crazy things he did while in office why did he come so close to winning?
Everything will depend on what happens tomorrow:
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If DeSantis wins by double digits, he’ll be seen as the surging candidate. If he under-performs compared to the rest of Republicans, Trump will use it and retain his popularity with Republicans.
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If the Democrats get blown out, the knives on the left will come out for Joe Biden, and he’s toast. There will be another candidate in 2024, probably Gavin Newsom, and he’ll win the Democratic nomination.
In short, if it’s a decent night for Democrats (hold the Senate, lose 20 or less seats in the House), it’ll be Trump/Biden, if both stay healthy enough to run.
If it’s a Republican blowout, it’ll be DeSantis/Newsom.
If Biden is out for whatever reason, Kamala Harris will either not run for President, or if she does she’ll be challenged by her own party and lose, In any event, she’ll never be President other than Joe leaving while in office.
These are all guesses, and subject to lots and lots of error this far from 2024. With the:pace of change these days, by 2024 the political world could look radically different than it does now.
I was one of them. I didn’t believe people would be dumb enough to actually vote for Donald Trump.
But that was in 2016 when Trump was just a candidate. After people saw four years of Trump being President and doing a terrible job at it, a lot of people showed they weren’t stupid enough to vote for him again. Sure, there are some people who are extremely stupid and will keep voting for Trump every time he tells them to - but there aren’t enough of those extremely stupid people to get him elected.
And the leaders of the Republican party know that. They’d rather win an election with somebody else than lost another election with Donald Trump. And Trump needs the Republican party; he’s completely helpless without their organization.
Trump went from getting 63 million votes in 2016 to getting 73 million votes in 2020.
I agree that unless the midterms are an absolute disaster for the Democrats then Biden will be the nominee in 2024. Not putting up an incumbent is a bad sign unless there’s a particularly non-political good reason, e.g., health.
But I just don’t see Trump backing down under any circumstances (other than being dead). He’s got too much ego, and he needs the protection of office.
This is the exact point at which I knew the American experiment with Democracy was over.
I politely disagree in part: the Republicans would PREFER to win an election with someone else, who is less likely to whip up his base against them if they push their own agenda, but Trump losing is NOT a given, while Trump whipping his base AGAINST another candidate or demanding a ‘none of the above’ from his base if he isn’t chosen certainly is! So if it’s a choice between losing even 10-20% of Trump’s people (say 7-14 MILLION votes), and supporting Trump, they’ll go with Trump every time.
Yes, there are some voters like that. But I think there’s a lot more voters who feel threatened and want to elect a President who they feel will protect them from whatever it is they’re scared of.
The Republicans have certainly played to this voter bloc by putting forth threats, real or imaginary: communists, black people, gay people, satanists, hippies, flag burners, terrorists, environmentalists, teenagers, feminists, etc. Trump himself did it, with his threat being illegal immigrants. But then Trump ended up becoming scarier than the people he was talking about. So people who were voting out of fear voted for Biden to protect them from Trump.
If Trump runs in 2024, all the Democrats need to do is show the January 6 tapes to win these voters again.
Gee there’s lots of talk in this thread about the facts.
( Trump’s record vs Biden’s, etc.)
But facts don’t count in modern politics…What counts is image.
And the Dems have a serious image problem. Lots of people have an image of the Democratic party as the party of those crazy progressives.
As the campaign heats up for 2024, the Bernie Bros are going to get loud and obnoxious, and ruin the chance of the Democrats to win against Trump …
Here’s what I predict will happen: a single photo op that will doom the Dems.
Sometime in the early days of the campaign, a high-ranking Democrat (maybe Kamala )will make a keynote speech on a university campus.
The speech will be scheduled at the biggest auditorium on campus, with lots of publicity. But, a few hours before the main speech, there will be a smaller gathering, with less publicity, set up as a compromise with the progressives, so they can discuss the issues which are important to them. The smaller event will be at the invitation of the campus LBGTQ+++++ club, and will take place in the campus safe space.
And some well-meaning , but naive member of the club will put up a sign on the door, with the logo of the university, saying “this room reserved for a meeting with Kamala Harris at 2 pm. No Straight White Men Allowed.”
The photo will go viral. Kamala will claim she didn’t notice it. But when pressed to condemn it, she -and half of the Democratic party-- will waffle, and say it was just a minor misunderstanding. Or that the sign was even legitimate, because the meeting was being held in the recognized safe space, etc.etc.
The comedian Bill Maher recently said that he’s not sure what the slogan will be for the Dems in 2024–but he suggests one that they should avoid:
White People Suck
Trump will win in 2024.
Who cares?
Trump went from getting 66 million votes cast against him in 2016 to getting 81 million cast against him in 2020. His margin of defeat grew from three million to eight million.
Trump was fading with Republicans, then got a big boost from the Jan 6 hearings which played right into the narrative about the ‘deep state’ that his supporters believe in. He got another boost from the raid on his home, which again validated the persecution complex many of his supporters have.
Trump’s political choices this cycle might have crashed and burned, making him look weak and harming Republicans, except the Democrats threw over $50 million into those campaigns to promote them to pump up their ‘dangerous Mega Maga’ narrative, and will likely get them all elected, making Trumo look like a king-maker.
Trump’s biggest advantage: Democrats who keep doing stupid things to keep him front and center. They didn’t learn their lesson in 2016.
Republicans were drawn to Teump because he was a ‘fighter’. They were willing to overlook a metric ton of flaws for that reason. But if another candidate can convince them that he’ll be a more effective fighter for their interests, Trump will lose.
Last week he called Ron DeSantis ‘Ron De Sanctimonious’. It went over like a lead balloon, and right-wing media universally criticised him for it. He was forced to say something nice about DeSantis the next day. That suggests his hold on the party may not be as strong as he’d like.
I think the masses were drawn to DJT because he hates the same people that they do. He made overt racism acceptable again in their eyes. He made it clear that he was going to hurt the “right” people. He still has an iron grip on the racists and the stupid, which is a sizeable percentage of the Republican electorate.