2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: Debate Night - Walz vs Weirdo

[ConAir]

Even if the polling is accurate, there will be a groundswell of energy for rank and file Democrats in coming weeks.

[Jman220]

I mean, I think we’ve probably avoided the republican trifecta with a 60+ seat Senate majority, so that’s a good thing.

[CaffeineNeeded]

Senate polling has been great for dems in everything I’ve seen.

[CaffeineNeeded]

Maybe, even probably? It will break the self-reinforcing negative media cycle I think.

Still though, I really, really doubt a lot of the stuff the polls were selling us. I just don’t think Trump was ever going to hit 25% black support.

[commonWealth]

@goofy

@commonWealth

there are reachable voters that eat up bipartisanship and centrism

Great, then we already won them because the other side is Trump/Vance.

(in reality, I highly (X) Doubt this assertion, or at least the idea that people like this exist in high enough numbers that Dems need to orient their strategy around turning them out and winning them, it sounds like the Third Way strategy Dem elites have been pursuing for two decades that got us Hillary losing to Trump)

I think the strategy generally sucks, but I think it was a thing in 2020 and can be in 2024. This is not about pivoting towards them a la Third Way Dems, though. It’s about creating a permission structure for their votes by elevating a prominent traditional Republican to a position of power that doesn’t slow down our agenda.

Like, Biden in 2020 wasn’t seen as a threat by centrists. The socialism attacks failed. He was safe. Kamala Harris may be perceived as a threat, but having Mitt Romney or Susan Collins give a stamp of approval that she’s safe is worth State or UN Ambassador or something like that.

[eyebooger]

@CaffeineNeeded

Senate polling has been great for dems in everything I’ve seen.

My hope is that the state polling where the leaders in swing states were consistently D senator + Trump were people who were going to vote D anyway but wanted to send a message to Biden to GTFO.

[ConAir]

Agree that Trump wasn’t getting more than 15% of the Black vote.

There was an Emerson poll that had Trump winning whites by four points. Also seemed way off, will be interesting to see how that cohort moves.

[CaffeineNeeded]

Yeah 100%. It’s not just weird stuff in Trumps favor too, there’s also a consistent youth movement for Trump and olds movement for Biden.

[goofy]

@ConAir

I don’t think the Third Way strategy is fundamentally flawed. Hillary was a uniquely disliked establishment figure.

I always remember this piece from 2017:

On Safari in Trump's America

non-paywall link

The trip was predicated on the optimistic notion that if Americans would only listen to each other, they would find more that united than divided them. This notion—the idea that, beyond our polarized politics, lies a middle, or third, path on which most can come together in agreement—is Third Way’s raison d’etre. It is premised on the idea that partisanship is bad, consensus is good, and that most Americans would like to meet in the middle.

But these are not uncontested assumptions. And, three days into their safari in flyover country, the researchers were hearing some things that disturbed them greatly—sentiments that threatened their beliefs to the very core.

The last focus group, a bunch of back-to-the-land organic farmers and artisanal small-businesspeople, was over, and the researchers had retreated to their car to debrief. There was a long pause after Hale turned off the tape recorder on which they were recording their impressions.

“I had a very hard time with that meeting,” she finally said. “The longer the meeting went on, the more it started to feel to me like just another community that had isolated itself, and it was right and everybody else wasn’t, you know?” The hippies should have been her kind of people, but the attitudes they’d expressed had offended her sense of the way America ought to be. She had come seeking mutual understanding, only to find that some people were not the least bit interested in meeting in the middle. And now she was at a crossroads: Would she have to revise her whole worldview to account for this troubling reality?

[Surf]

@eyebooger

My hope is that the state polling where the leaders in swing states were consistently D senator + Trump were people who were going to vote D anyway but wanted to send a message to Biden to GTFO.

Yeah this has been my pet theory, also for folks upset with handling of Gaza as well

[boredsocial]

[McTrollson]

Do you think Trump ever calls her “Pocohontas” during the campaign?

[pvn]

The amount of right wing cope on Twitter right now is pretty astounding

[pvn]

Eg the check mark replies to this

https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1815117337336668328

[BriansHat]

Yeah the right wing tears over this are what gives me the most confidence about this move.

[m_reed05]

I would have guessed her younger than 59.

[feedthabeast]

That’s the good stuff

[CaffeineNeeded]

What a little fuckboy

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1815088145051873756?s=46&t=N0_fcOKIYYmlCS2e4YShsQ

[MrWookie]

This is truly incredible to me. My main fear about Biden giving up is that it would set off a cascade of Republican vindication grand standing: they were right that Biden was too old while the Dems were covering it up, and by extension, they must also be right about him being the worst president of all time while the Dems were covering that up. It’s not logical, but it’s a winning message. To see them wholly unprepared for Biden actually dropping out, I dare say, gives me some hope?

[MrWookie]

Lol, sounds like the Republicans are going to both try to get him to resign from office or maybe even impeach him immediately while also suing to keep him on the ballot as the nominee. Pick one you idiots.