Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

Saw a breakdown that for what it is worth, all seven of those justices at the Colorado Supreme Court were apparently appointed by Democrats, so even among the seven there was not a unanimous consensus. We are so beyond the realm of right and wrong, we are at best teetering on the brink of what is remotely achievable. Like, hypothetical law, because the black and white of it has barely held for the last few years. That's why it's a hail Mary. It can say explicitly in the Constitution that people named Trump are forbidden from running and it would still be a hail Mary these days, imo.

xpost it also included unaffiliated voters, who also aren't allowed to vote in the primary, though

Haley does poll better against Biden than Trump does, but I'd bet that's in large part because she's a lesser-known quantity whom voters don't have a strong opinion about. Right now, she polls well against Biden simply because she's neither Biden nor Trump. For a challenger to an incumbent, that may well be enough to win, but it's also way too early to tell since she's never been at the center of a national campaign.

xpost I mean, 6 members of the highest court in the land were appointed by Republicans and any questions of their legitimacy get responses of "cry more", soooooooooooo

I'm voting in the primary only to signal the presence of liberals in Tennessee. I'd be happy to sit it out otherwise, but I want our lack of proportional representation on the record. So that's what my vote is for. Biden is just the name next to the bubble. Voting and not voting can mean lots of different things, and we can define them for ourselves.

As I understand it, the U.S. is pretty much the only country where parties even allow voters to choose their general-election nominees. Anywhere else, Dean Phillips wouldn't even be on the ballot!

lol thinking that in addition to the "Trump's gonna win" containment thread we're going to need one for "Leftists who refuse to vote for Biden/don't try to change our minds" thread. Or we're gonna have this argument nonstop for 10 months.

That would be the "Leftists howling into the void because the world refuses their gift of sanity" thread.

you misspelled "grift"

not from their leftcentric pov

See this is why we need a containment thread.

I apologize to JCLC for the association with a genocidaire, it was unfair.

appreciate but no offense was taken, we do get heated on the politics thread, it's a tradition

Or we are people who actually dare to want something better than the current rot. Your “clear-eyed” view is just nihilism, afaic.

yes, I want that, too, but I'm not the nihilist here; a movement whose single greatest accomplishment is not getting appointed officials who'll achieve their stated ends does not actually want what it says it wants. no window is being moved by online lefties going gonzo on biden, which they were doing looooong before his latest disgrace, it's just reflexive mainstream Democrat hating. (I hate them too! But I'm not a revolutionary because I can really sock it to 'em online.) if your efforts defeat your stated goals, then those are not your actual goals.

Yep, hence my remark an hour ago about primaries. That was our chance to register our disgust with the status quo. Biden won with clear majorities, and here we are. ymmv but I don't vote for exciting candidates: I vote for candidates whose goals more or less align with mine and who have a record of accomplishment. Biden's funding of Bibi's war machine is in the same tradition as Obama's targeting of American citizens with drone rockets and FDR's internment camps; I voted for the first two anyway because #Florida.

look I have no reason to doubt these people table is referring to but I feel like we've already had this exact same conversation many times before. in 2020 when it became clear that Biden was gonna be the nominee there were a lot of progressives on Twitter saying the Dems were absolutely gonna lose 2020 now. it was all the same talk too, "nobody I know is going to vote Biden", "they'll need to do better than that if they want to earn my vote", "I voted Hillary but I'm sitting this one out", etc. etc. and yet somehow Biden still got 81 million votes. because I think at the end of the day its a lot easier to find the motivation to vote when fascism is staring you in the face. especially when it comes in the form of one of the most obnoxious, unlikeable people this country has ever produced. I mean I totally get the leftist opposition vs. Biden right now, but the people who are hitting him hard for what's happening with Israel are generally smart enough to realize that bringing in a dude who is almost certainly gonna float the idea of just nuking Gaza is not gonna make things any better.

and it's December 2023. The general public -- even Dem voters -- ain't paying attention.

Particularly since there's barely a primary season this time around.

people who actually dare to want something better

ah yes those rare people who want a better life. you can't even swing a cat by the tail without hitting one. (apologies to ilx's resident 'cat')

scrolling up to the top of this thread w/Trump's childhood photo up there is like watching the end of Come and See

As I understand it, the U.S. is pretty much the only country where parties even allow voters to choose their general-election nominees. Anywhere else, Dean Phillips wouldn't even be on the ballot!

― jaymc, Wednesday, December 20, 2023 12:42 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

dean phillips can be on the ballot under the system used in most other countries. he just can't claim to represent a particular party unless he wins an internal process in that party. having a state-run election to decide who will be on the ballot in the next state-run election is not an essential attribute of democracy.

Biden won with clear majorities

I think in large part because people perceived he was probably the only candidate who could beat Trump.

xpost

Especially in states with party registration and closed primaries. Strong case to be made that those shouldn't even be publicly funded, they should be paid for by the parties.

and it's December 2023. The general public -- even Dem voters -- ain't paying attention.

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, December 20, 2023 1:11 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

its always important to remember that the people who post on the ilxor.com politics thread, along with most of those who are (or were) active on political Twitter, actually make up like the 99th percentile of sickos who actually follow this stuff. you see op-eds now about how the country/media isn't taking this seriously but I think they will once election season comes. people might have forgot this now but 2020 had so much coverage dedicated to Trump's wishy-washy statements about whether or not he would accept a Biden victory and all the things he was actively doing to make it harder to vote, particularly by mail. the plan to encourage in-person voting so it would look like a Trump victory on election day but would shift Biden's way over the next day or two, thereby generating the illusion of foul play was uh...not exactly a covert strategy. it was talked about constantly.

so I suspect for the 2024 election, this is gonna be the story, as much as emails were for Hillary in 2016. reporters are gonna be clamping at the bit to nail him, and every elected Republican, down on this subject. this is the shit they dream about. I don't think he's gonna get tossed from the ballot but if indeed the SC overturns it, is a ruling finding that he's legally ineligible to run according to the Constitution getting reversed by Trump's hand-picked justices really gonna be a good thing for him? especially when said candidate is currently under fire for directly quoting shit from Mein Kampf?

If Trump's off the ballot then Biden might not even run

This is the truest thing said here today imo

Voting for Jesus btw

One of these cycles, I legit hope he's on the ballot

Jesus has often run for downballot offices.

Tax collector

Jesus works a no-show job

Been waiting about 2,000 years or so for him to show up.

Any day now.

My new ILX handle is plainly labeled

we probably do need a containment thread, but fwiw, i vote in local elections and do on-the-ground organizing, a point I have stated numerous times across numerous threads. Everything I have learned from my 20+ years of doing this kind of work and voting with the ethical imperatives that I do has informed my decisions— I haven’t voted for a major party president since Kerry, and I doubt I ever will again.

You have to realize though that the fact that you live in a swing state (that Trump won in 2016) and did not vote to stop him twice makes your complaints about him feel a bit hollow

I mean everyone's free to do whatever they want but I think JCLC made a pretty good point here:

if your efforts defeat your stated goals, then those are not your actual goals

in the last two elections I know people who said they either wouldn't vote or would vote 3rd party because Trump winning would be a "wake up call" for the Dems to stop running shitty centrists. that's not exactly what we got after Hillary lost and imo kind of a hard argument to make when the other candidate is calling the opposition vermin and is openly talking about the poisoning of the blood of the nation. I very much understand the frustration and anguish and disappointment in the people who claim to be "on our side" but, as my stepdad always told me, "it's better than a stick in the eye"

Pretty sure I remember Tabes saying that he didn’t live in PA in ‘16

You have to realize though that the fact that you live in a swing state (that Trump won in 2016) and did not vote to stop him twice makes your complaints about him feel a bit hollow

xp My dad said the same thing, only he called it a sharp stick.

I think I said this upthread, but I first voted in 1984. Since then, I have thought that I was voting for a candidate, rather than against another candidate, in 1992 and 2008. That's about it. Well, I'll throw in 2012. Obama was a seriously flawed president, but if he could have run for a third term I'd have voted for him again, regardless of whom he was running against.

All that is to say, I'm very glad I voted against the assholes I voted against, and will do so again next year.

Obama was a seriously flawed president, but if he could have run for a third term ...

https://uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/get-out-whitford-1.jpg

heh

I actually forgot that was a line lol

Keyes, I lived in California from 2008-2017.

I'll vote for Biden again without holding my nose... yes, his response to the Gaza situation is awful, but I wonder if any prior president would have done anything different (Carter exempted)

When I vote for Biden, I'm voting for his administration more than the individual... and so far, that administration has been pretty effective in passing some legislation that's not completely horrible. The grim possibility of a Trump second term means that we need to circle the wagons and pretend that Biden is the greatest leader that ever lived, assuming he's actually in the general

xpost ok, but in 2020 PA was still a swing state that had gone for Trump 4 years earlier. A lot of people would value casting a vote against Trump in that situation. Sometimes people participate in vote swaps (i.e. someone in CA agrees to vote for the Green Party candidate or whoever in exchange for a swing state voter to vote for the Dem.)

is PA a swing state? Serious question. Before 2016 the last time it had gone red was with Poppy Bush in '88.

Biden beat Trump in 2020 there by 1.15%

You may also remember the lovely senators Rick Santorum and Pat Toomey.

Philly on one side, Pittsburgh on the other with Alabama in the middle, etc.

Lawrence Lessig wrote an op-ed explaining why Colorado’s decision should be overturned which is pretty depressing. Basically the conclusion is he can only be defeated electorally but at the point I have absolutely no faith in collective wisdom that will make that happen.

The compelling reason why the insurrectionist clause was added to the 14th amendment was that the process of reabsorbing the CSA states back into the USA meant that there was soon to be significant number of voters capable of voting for their insurrectionist leaders, both for Congress and President. It was explicitly denying voters their ability to vote for candidates who may have easily won election, had they been allowed to serve. It's sole purpose was anti-democratic in fact and in spirit, as a means of preserving the Union from the baleful politics of half the nation. That clear purpose should invalidate any argument that denying Trump continued access to the office of president is anti-democratic and disenfranchises his voters. The insurrectionist clause is deliberately anti-democratic and designed to disenfranchise voters from electing insurrectionists.

trump will be fine if he just writes a nice letter to andrew johnson