Keep this your little secret, but I kind of think Trump likes to seek attention by saying crazy things.
For all the good this’ll do:
Right. Meetings are the best way to fix important issues. 
Hey, Anthony Scaramucci was on the zoom. We’re saved!
How else should people coordinate their efforts and plan? Should we all just sit back and hold for the best in 2024?
Meetings are necessary but not sufficient in the quest to fix important issues. Yeah, I’ve become cynical.
“No matter how cynical I get, it’s impossible to keep up.” - Lily Tomlin
Color me not surprised:
He doesn’t want Pence, but if that fly is available…
If he runs, no matter who he chooses to run with, his running mate in everyone’s mind will be Putin. I don’t see how he is a viable candidate now with this ongoing humanitarian disaster at the hands of his bestie Vlad (sorry Kim Jong Un, he was seeing someone else)
His best hope is that the Ukraine crisis is out of the headlines by 2023. If he can get his potential supporters to forget about it or retroactively declare it was “much ado about nothing” then he might have a chance.
As long as folks remember Trump as the one who cheered for the dictator who bombed civilians as a flex, even many people on the right aren’t okay with it.
and tried to make sending miltiary aid contingent on Zelenskyy doing him “a favour”…
But they won’t remember.
The war will end within a few weeks, and the election is three years away.
Once Ukraine is off the TV screens, nobody will remember why gas costs $5 a gallon. But they will blame Biden for it.
The election will be decided by domestic American issues.
Which means race.
Democratic turnout will be 5% ( or maybe even10 % ) lower , due to the new restrictive voting laws.(which cause the most inconvenience in larger urban precincts)
The Dems will continue to push progressive issues, which will backfire by giving Foxnews plenty of fuel to stoke the fears of white people , who will turnout in the same numbers as before…
I expect Trump to win…
I wouldn’t consider this a certainty. And it’s not just a matter of the conflict, it’s a matter of the talk about the conflict.
So you predict Biden will reverse this in a couple weeks? I doubt it, although Biden and Trump are tied in the one post-invasion poll.
In any normal situation, war in Europe should help the American incumbent. But in this polarized environment — no.
As to how to turn it around, I’ve been a pessimist. Donald Trump is simply the front-runner to be next POTUS. When Biden repeatedly said “fund the police,” he was on the right track, but I doubt swing voters believed him.
Hopeless? Certainly not. Putin is losing. But liberalism isn’t doing well overall.
In a Marist poll, Biden jumped 8 percentage points after the State of the Union address. That’s 8 points above the same poll last month. Absolutely huge jump. Looks like his response to the war helped a lot.
That and more. WaPo has a compendium:
tl;dr:
- Accused Ukraine of interfering in 2016 election.
- Purged well-respected Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.
- Froze military assistance to Ukraine.
- Refused meeting with Zelensky at White House
- Turned Ukraine policy over to Giuliani.
If you find the article is pay-walled, just google the words:
- Five vile things Trump did to Ukraine
to find a bunch of other similar-looking articles.
This is fun:
So your strategy is “White Democrats should throw the blacks and gays under the bus and save ourselves?”. Fuck to the no. If we wanted a candidate who isn’t going to speak out against white supremacy and homophobia, we could just vote for Trump.
I’m not the least bit surprised by this, and its why the 2024 Primary campaign is going to be interesting. As far as rallying the troop Trump is at his best when he is attacking and belittling. So far his opponents have been people his base don’t like, (e.g Democrats, RINO Republicans, the media, Mexicans) or people the base don’t have a preconceived notion about but are perfectly willing to hate because Trump tells them to (e.g. Fauci). But they actually like DeSantis. They may or may not like him as much as Trump, but they certainly view him as one of the good guys.
Having one friend bad mouth another friend make people uncomfortable and generally lowers the opinion of the first friend more than the second. If Trump was smart he would play relatively nice with DeSantis, with maybe a bit of a patronizing vibe, and leave the attacks to his subordinates, while he coasts to victory. But I’m not sure he knows how to do anything else but attack.