2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: Peak Vibes

Politics & News
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Well, the matchup appears to be set. We’re going to run it back for all the marbles, because that’s simply the best America can do right now. An 81-year-old establishment institutionalist against a soon-to-be 78-year-old insurrectionist buffoon who wants to be dictator.

No, we cannot have anyone younger. No, we cannot have anyone more progressive. No, we cannot have anyone less indicted. This is who we are right now, and this is the matchup we apparently deserve as a nation.

So without further ado, let’s meet the candidates. In the blue corner, standing 6’0 and weighing in at 178 pounds… The Current President of the United States… JOE BIDEN!

And in the red corner, standing 6’6" and weighing in at 220 pounds… With a bodyfat percentage reported to be just 6%. He’s ripped to shreds and no, he’s not talking about the Constitution. With a handicap of 3, the greatest golfer in the world, the most honest man of all time, the guy who can wriggle his way out of any mess, and if you ask him… The Current President of the United States… DONALD TRUMP!

Let’s go to the tale of the tape.

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It’s the first matchup in US History between two men who BOTH claim to be the rightfully sitting president. And yet somehow, it’s still a competitive race. So many questions will be answered in the coming months, like… Can an 81-year-old double fist Ben and Jerry’s and survive til Election Day? Can Trump’s war chest hit a billion in reverse? How much can Jacked Up Joe bench press? How much grift can the greatest grifter grift if the grifter can grift the GOP?

We’ve got the polls thread and the non-presidential elections thread, but this is the place to discuss the crazy shit Trump says while campaigning, the awesome Biden ads, the times Biden sounds/looks too old, the times Trump looks too orange, and to hopium it up about blue North Carolina and doompost about red Virginia. No, Texas will not be turning blue. (Note to self: no, no it won’t. Stop. Just stop.)

We have 239 days until Election Day, 315 days until the inauguration, and thus around 300 days until the potential insurrection. We’ll laugh, we’ll cry, we’ll obsess over political betting markets, and we’ll all gather round our televisions to watch Kornacki do his thing on that fateful night in November. Dear God, please let it be a night and not a week this time.

In the wise words of Benjamin Franklin, we’ve got “A republic, if you can keep it.” We’re a coin flip to keep it. Let’s run good ONE (MORE) TIIIIIIIIIIIIIME!

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And we kick things off with Donald Trump serving one up on a silver platter about cutting Social Security and Medicare.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1767183483212906771

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In b4 orange man declares fra….

Never mind.

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Yay.

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Oh look it’s the 63,234th thing Trump has said that would have ended any other political career.

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That’s a lot of indictments lol

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He really did go out there and defame Carrol again damn near the day he posted bond for it. We’ll see when that comes back up later in the thread when she sues him… again.

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I’m sure he’ll find another publicly traded company to cover his bond despite the fact that there is zero chance he is ever paying that publicly traded company when it is time to collect.

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I swear to god Trump has a bigger personal fuck up every 24 hours than I have had in my entire life. That really is the most staggering thing about it for me, the absolutely wild unfairness lol. I have spent my entire life in a system that brutally punishes any mistake I might make (and I’m a white guy! I am horrified to consider that it might actually be worse for anyone else!) while coping with multiple mental health issues + off the charts has all the symptoms ADHD… and this fucking putz gets to fuck up every single thing he touches all day long for 70+ years and it results in him being POTUS lol.

Just in case anyone was wondering if this country is in any way meritocratic. It’s not. This is the plague of nepotism sent to us by the deadly gods of probability. This is what we risk at every level of our lives when we choose to use our personal power to bend the way reality works to favor our incompetent friends and relatives.

We also need to consider the type of citizen we are promoting when we aggressively select for the students who are the absolute best at conscientiously following directions plus the children of the already rich and powerful. Seems like a pretty good way to get a bunch of Paul Ryan’s taking up all the best and most influential jobs.

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Saw lawtwitter something something about how he can go back to the same court since he repeated what he said on CNBC.

I have no clue what that means, though I guess the same judge would be best for E Jean.

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https://x.com/JoeBiden/status/1767185951850103288?s=20

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Someone seriously needs to file a shareholder lawsuit against Chubb for this bullshit.

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They report earnings in late April, I wonder if there will be some questions about it on the earnings call. At the end of the day, they’re a $104B company that did $8.48B in earnings over the last year. So even if they light $100M on fire, it’s a rounding error in their earnings - especially if it buys them something else - like favors if he wins.

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There is a reason why it’s called Fuck You money.

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Had a chat with my Dad who’s “100% not voting for Biden” (because he thinks Kamala will become president and the border) but “doesn’t want to vote for Trump” (because of all the usual reasons) and is “probably voting for RFK” despite knowing ~nothing about RFK other than he’s a man who isn’t Biden or Trump…

It got me thinking, there’s a real chance RFK is polling high enough to get onto the debate stage and turn these into a 3-way affair. I’m really not sure who that’s good for, the dynamic would be wildly different. I think it would make Biden’s job much tougher in the debates. It would also be pretty high variance deciding whether or not to go after RFK on vaccines, school shootings not being a hoax, etc, which then gives him oxygen and takes the attention off Trump as opposed to just trying to isolate Trump.

My thought is that Biden doesn’t need people shouting across him from both sides, and significantly more interruptions that may exacerbate his stutter. So Team Biden should probably be trying to spend money to keep RFK’s numbers below the threshold, whatever it is (low double digits right?).

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Dude a 3 way debate with that extra crazy in there pulling x votes from the current crazy and y votes from Biden where x is almost certainly a minimum of 5 times bigger than y would be a massive gift to :coolbiden::coolbiden::coolbiden:

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I have a coupe of friends who are the libertarian/republican type who voted Biden in 2020 because they couldn’t stand Trump. I’ve seen them post about RFKjr lately and I’m pretty sure they’ll vote for him in November (they’re anti-vax curious as well). I think there’s a significant number of people out there with the same beliefs as my friends to carry RFK to the 10%-ish mark.

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I watch 0 political stuff on youtube. Just got a video rec from nowhere of RFK jr. Never have gotten anything for Biden or Trump before. Social media is a cancer

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Yeah I can see how people could land on RFK at this point even if they’re not anti-vax. It’s pretty easy for someone to just brush that off as, “Oh whatever, I’ll get vaccinated and get my kids vaccinated, that’s all that matters,” without thinking more deeply about what it says about RFK’s worldview and how he’d govern, and the ramifications of anti-vaxxers going even more mainstream.

But he’s going to talk about the systematic erosion of the middle class, and that’s going to resonate. He wants to raise taxes on the wealthy and cut defense spending and use more of the budget to help rebuild the middle class.

I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if he pops to around 20% after the first debate, if he gets into it - and I am not very confident who he’d actually pull from.

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I mean there’s honestly a lot of good stuff in RFK’s platform:

  • $15/hr minimum wage
  • Expand free childcare
  • Drop housing costs by backing 3% mortgages with tax-free bonds
  • Increase regulations on large corporations
  • Make student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy and cut interest rates on student loans to 0%
  • Incentivize local governments to put vacant lots on the market, loosen zoning, and build more housing
  • Stop destabilizing other countries and causing mass migration of refugees
  • End the war on drugs
  • Break up “too big to fail” banks
  • Turn Americorps into a non-college path for high school grads and give them food/housing/medical and a stipend, and assistance with tuition/healthcare/mortgage after their four years
  • Go after union-busting corporations and protect unions

If I thought he could actually get all that through Congress, and I thought he could win, I’d actually consider whether it was worth the trade off of putting an anti-vaxx lunatic in office. But it doesn’t stop at the anti-vaxx stuff for the lunacy. He’s also probably pro-life, although he walked it back and said he’s pro-choice (which tells you where he thinks his votes would come from). He’s also terrible on Ukraine, pretty sure he’s fully pro Israel on the genocide there, and he’s said some pretty racist shit. So that’s disqualifying to me…

But if he gets in the debate, he’s going to hit both candidates on the border - Biden for being soft, Trump for being inhumane. He’s going to hit Biden on housing costs, he’s going to hit Trump on abortion, and he’s probably going to say Biden and Trump are two sides of the same coin. He’s going to say a lot of stuff that will resonate.

Actually pretty shook after looking at his website. How much does the average pro-vaxx person actually care that he’s anti-vaxx? His policies on regular stuff are going to appeal way more to the left than the right.

Team Biden needs to think very carefully about exactly how to attack RFK and when to do it. In theory, you want to paint him as the opposite of you on the border to align him with Trump on the border so he steals some of those votes… But in reality, if you do that, you make immigration a major focus of the election and you probably lose. I’d hit him for the heroin stuff to hurt him with serious voters, but I doubt Biden will want to do that given Hunter’s addiction problems… and it might cost RFK some “law and order” type voters, who are mostly between him and Trump.

In a perfect world he picks someone as crazy as Aaron Rodgers who pushes the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories, and you nail him on that and lock him out from a lot of your voters without hurting him among Trump voters.

You also don’t want to hit him so hard so early that you elevate him into the race by giving him attention. But at this point I’m thinking I prefer a head-to-head between Biden and Trump to a three-way contest, or debate. Biden needs to keep this guy below the threshold, or raise the threshold, whichever.