US US Politics 2024

[Lou]

Any US forum members … please explain to me how your fellow countrypeople can be so unbothered by what a shitshow his first term was?

I'm not so sure anymore.... but in the past I was pretty sure that it was his thinly disguised racism.

 

[silva]

Any US forum members … please explain to me how your fellow countrypeople can be so unbothered by what a shitshow his first term was?

Wah, prices are up now, let’s give Dump another chance? How bad could it be? Seriously?

How brainwashed by Faux News and other questionable media outlets is the majority of the American electorate that it’s even a question that this person should never come near any position of influence again?

Here's one of my views--
Politicians have always been known to be liars, to be at least somewhat corrupt, and easily bought. When trump first announced his candidacy everyone came out against him, politicians on both sides agreed he was just TOOO much of everything, far too far of what Americans stood for. But Americans---those 'mericans who have been long scared, largely by the republican party, of having guns taken away, of immigration, of people unlike themselves being the cause of crimes. Those folks so want to be above others, a need to put blame on people beneath them as being the cause of why they aren't doing better. These are the ones who fear raising minimum wage will raise prices as opposed to the owners profits. They are the ones who look to leaders that reinforce their beliefs that it's the marginalised people that are creating their problems and offer them hope in solving them by keeping them away, by making sure they have fewer rights than they enjoy.
trump says the lies over and over, louder and louder. He actually ACTS on what the republicans have always promised people, and what the democrats have always promised they would never allow. Neither party ever did what they promise, instead using them as campaign points, both in a cat and dog slap fight that in reality was only ever a stage play. Did the democrats ever seal the rights of women or change the laws protecting minorities? Did the republicans ever keep manufacturing in the US and close the borders? trump was nothing like either party but managed to sneak in by both refusing to acknowledge voters disgust in both parties.
trump knows the hidden desires of people and says what they want to hear, but till now have kept it to themselves-he allows the quiet things to be said aloud, and says it so the people don't have to acknowledge it's what they also believe. When you speak to his supporters they largely (for me at least) oppose his subversive opinions, but instead speak about the economy and protecting the US blah blah blah....
The republican party has completely lost control, and so have the dems. Few people want either one, and have no recourse.
I do fear another term of trump. People are just sick of not having any representation, and having the people in government who try and have their back shut down! trump is supported by the other extremists and are overruling any sense of law or order and allowed to do it. The times of 'When they go low we go high' should long be over. Democrats are getting no where by opposing the libel side of the party. They've proved they're most against the socialist side more than the nationalist side of repubs
We'll get another trump term because democrats are just plain sick of being used as pawns. Had the chance to change the Supreme court and blew it, had the chance to enforce the ERA, to withhold funding for genocides, of protecting voting rights and correcting the justice system......

 

[Lou]

So this was a latent faction of Americans that had just - that had already been sitting there and had already existed.

Yeah, I'm not sure if that is it.

I'm not saying Mason is wrong. But I do think he has the cart and horse in the reverse order.

Going after marginalized groups is part of the "tyrants" handbook. Every tyrant has done it.
Stalin may have written the book on it. Hitler took it to a whole other level. Orban, Putin, DeSantis and Abbott are trying to do it, too.
To put it bluntly, it appeals to a lot of "everyday" people: Its not your fault - it's theirs.

I don't think the was a lot of latent "haters" in Russia or Germany, Or Texas or Florida for that matter. But every society has some dissatisfaction, it's these tyrants that stoke the fires and aim the hatred.

In Germany there was a lot of Go Along to Get Along once Hitler took power. I don't think we are there yet but we need more people to stand up for other people's rights.

@KLS52 How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky is only 300 pages long and is my favorite book of this type.
The author has another book out now called Tyranny of the Minority.

Rachel Maddow has a couple of books and podcast series that are also good stuff. Ultra and Deja News.

 

[Emma JC]

from a Northern perspective - IMO Trump is just your garden variety thug that a few smart bigoted, fascist people are using as a puppet to destroy democracy and take power - people like Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Guiliani, Roger Stone etc who smarter and more disgusting than Trump can even think to be - they have his hand up his back and control him with accolades etc - I think back to that list that Steve Bannon had up in his office back in the Whitehouse in 2017.... it was laid out from the beginning and no way Trump is smart enough to come up with it - all those latent tendencies had been in sooo many people and he brought it all to the forefront

What's on Steve Bannon's policy white board? Now we know

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s fabled white board, filled with a list of policy goals, appeared to show up in the background of a photo posted Tuesday evening by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

www.pbs.org

If the US is not careful (and they will take us along with them) they will be living in an Atwood Handmaid's Tale where only old fat white men are in power.

Emma JC
Find your vegan soulmate or just a friend. www.spiritualmatchmaking.com

 

[Brian W]

I am frustrated because many evangelical Christians worldwide have taken on US right wing ideas such as anti-vaccine, climate change denial and - yes - pro-Trump ideas. I was looking at Prophecy Today UK online and they are saying that Trump being found guilty in court was a politically motivated decision. Can't have anything to do with the fact that he committed crimes while in office could it...?

 

[Lou]

I am frustrated because many evangelical Christians ....

Would it be fair to say that the hypocrisy of the evangelicals is of Biblical Proportions?

 

[Brian W]

Would it be fair to say that the hypocrisy of the evangelicals is of Biblical Proportions?

I'm evangelical myself but I favour such things as concern for the poor and equal opportunities and things commonly considered leftist. I kind of assumed Jesus considered those important too!

 

[PTree15]

Here's one of my views--
... But Americans---those 'mericans who have been long scared, largely by the republican party, of having guns taken away, of immigration, of people unlike themselves being the cause of crimes. Those folks so want to be above others, a need to put blame on people beneath them as being the cause of why they aren't doing better. These are the ones who fear raising minimum wage will raise prices as opposed to the owners profits. They are the ones who look to leaders that reinforce their beliefs that it's the marginalised people that are creating their problems and offer them hope in solving them by keeping them away, by making sure they have fewer rights than they enjoy.

This. It sort of explains why some people will vote against their own interests just so they can stick it to the marginalized groups.

Also, I think the corruption in politics is so pervasive that it's become almost an accepted aspect of being a politician, leaving average people just shaking their heads but resigned to it all. I think people are weary when it comes to corruption, and nothing shocks or surprises them anymore. So I don't think the guilty verdicts will mean much, especially when most people figure Trump will still get away with things, avoid prison, etc.

I'm hoping the Georgia case, if it ever gets to trial, is what puts him behind bars. To me, that phone call to the Georgia secretary of state was so blatantly election interference, fraud, etc. I couldn't believe my ears when I heard the audio of it.

...
I do fear another term of trump. People are just sick of not having any representation, and having the people in government who try and have their back shut down! trump is supported by the other extremists and are overruling any sense of law or order and allowed to do it. The times of 'When they go low we go high' should long be over. Democrats are getting no where by opposing the libel side of the party. They've proved they're most against the socialist side more than the nationalist side of repubs
We'll get another trump term because democrats are just plain sick of being used as pawns. Had the chance to change the Supreme court and blew it, had the chance to enforce the ERA, to withhold funding for genocides, of protecting voting rights and correcting the justice system......

I fear Trump will win, too, despite the train wreck that his first presidency was. While MAGA may be a small percentage of the voting public, Trump still has many supporters who somehow believe he did a good job the first time around -- including several of my family members. It's distressing to say the least.

Trump (a master at manipulation and fearmongering) and his campaign have harped on the issues Silva brought up: the economy, immigration, etc. ,and, as I've said before, the Dems are horrible at messaging and pumping up their own candidate.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

'In interviews with nearly 2,000 voters who previously took New York Times/Siena College surveys, President Biden appeared to gain slightly in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s conviction last week for falsifying business records.

The group favored Mr. Trump by three points when originally interviewed in April and May, but this week they backed him by only one point.'

Source: Small Shift Toward Biden After Trump Verdict (probably paywall)

It went from 48%-45% Trump-Biden to 47%-46%. 3 point lead to 1 point lead.

Slightly better than expected. Then again 1% of 2,000 voters switching is like 20 people. So not sure if we can extrapolate 20 people to the whole nation, let's see what other evidence comes out later.

 

[Lou]

Kristi Noem describes her love of animals in new documentary

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has expressed her love of animals after facing intense backlash to the revelation that she once killed her pet dog.

www.newsweek.com

she should be a PETA Woman of the Year.

 

[KLS52]

I hope there's a discussion here, at some point, about the debate. I haven't watched it yet...not sure I can handle it...but based on what I'm seeing on fb, by friends on both sides, it was an absolute sh&t show. I need someone to talk me down because I'm about to throw myself off a cliff.

 

[Second Summer]

I hope there's a discussion here, at some point, about the debate. I haven't watched it yet...not sure I can handle it...but based on what I'm seeing on fb, by friends on both sides, it was an absolute sh&t show. I need someone to talk me down because I'm about to throw myself off a cliff.

I also haven't watched it, and nor do I have the patience for it. I did hear someone comment on a podcast about it. Apparently, Biden's performance was so catastrophically bad there is a risk that (somehow) the Dems could replace him. I'm not sure how they would do that technically speaking, since it's so late in the race. I suspect it might just be wishful thinking but we do live in extraordinary times ...

 

[Chryssie]

I saw about 2 minutes of the debate before I turned it off. Trump was his normal loud-mouth blustery liar and Biden looked like a lost lamb going to slaughter. Sorry but Biden looked old and frail and just those couple minutes makes me very afraid.

 

[PTree15]

I was just on the phone with a friend who watched it and said it was an absolute disaster for Biden (and my friend could only stomach watching about 10 minutes of it!), that everything that could have gone wrong for him did. So I am glad I did not watch it. I got a phone call right before it was supposed to come on, so I never turned it on.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

I watched most of it. I turned it off before the end because I wanted the last thing I had before going to bed to be some music to meditate to rather than this debate which was ending at my bed time.

Biden's voice was raspier than usual, weaker. In terms of concerns about age, he clearly looks worse and stumbled a bit a few times (although not as bad as some media are spinning it). Hopefully this debate will put an end to the argument in liberal circles that Trump is the more senile one, that was always based on selective clips, when Trump loses his train of thought he is at least capable rambling on and keeping speaking rather than drawing a blank.

The debate was (relatively) easier to watch than the one for the 2020 campaign where they kept interrupting each other. This time they didn't, I think they may have been because their mikes were turned off when they couldn't speak.

Biden looked upset with some of what Trump was saying and at times looked like he might lose it, but just about stayed composed. He takes some of the attacks personally. Trump was more composed. The debate was very negative with personal attacks and criticism of each other's record, but very little positive vision, and little or no new policies announced.

I saw the debate as a draw that changes nothing, but the media is spinning it as a Trump win which should help his polling numbers.

I can only reiterate what I said at the top of page 4, post 61, on May 13th. Biden should stand aside.

If Biden stands aside and a new contest is announced, the democrats will dominate the news cycle with that and odds are will get someone better than Biden. Much better to do so this month or early July, plenty of time then before a November election.

If you've been following the politics closely, you won't learn much new from the debate.

 

[silva]

I feel asleep watching myself msbc pre show. I woke up to hear rump pick on Biden about his golf swing. Biden looked in bad shape.
I'm sick about the whole thing. I have no party affiliation anymore, except I guess progressive. We so need a third party!

 

[KLS52]

The takeaway I'm seeing is that Trump started strong but became more incoherent as it went in. Biden started out really poorly but got better toward the end.

 

[KLS52]

Heather Cox Richardson had an interesting piece on it.

 

[KLS52]

"Tonight was the first debate between President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and by far the most striking thing about the debate was the overwhelming focus among pundits immediately afterward about Biden’s appearance and soft, hoarse voice as he rattled off statistics and events. Virtually unmentioned was the fact that Trump lied and rambled incoherently, ignored questions to say whatever he wanted; refused to acknowledge the events of January 6, 2021; and refused to commit to accepting the result of the 2024 presidential election, finally saying he would accept it only if it met his standards for fairness.

Immediately after the debate, there were calls for Biden to drop out of the race, but aside from the fact that the only time a presidential candidate has ever done that—in 1968—it threw the race into utter confusion and the president’s party lost, Biden needed to demonstrate that his mental capacity is strong in order to push back on the Republicans’ insistence that he is incapable of being president. That, he did, thoroughly. Biden began with a weak start but hit his stride as the evening wore on. Indeed, he covered his bases too thoroughly, listing the many accomplishments of his administration in such a hurry that he was sometimes hard to understand.

In contrast, Trump came out strong but faded and became less coherent over time. His entire performance was either lies or rambling non-sequiturs. He lied so incessantly throughout the evening that it took CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale almost three minutes, speaking quickly, to get through the list.

Trump said that some Democratic states allow people to execute babies after they’re born and that every legal scholar wanted Roe v. Wade overturned—both fantastical lies. He said that the deficit is at its highest level ever and that the U.S. trade deficit is at its highest ever: both of those things happened during his administration. He lied that there were no terrorist attacks during his presidency; there were many. He said that Biden wants to quadruple people’s taxes—this is “pure fiction,” according to Dale—and lied that his tax cuts paid for themselves; they have, in fact, added trillions of dollars to the national debt.

Dale went on: Trump lied that the U.S. has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has when it’s the other way around, and he was off by close to $100 billion when he named the amount the U.S. has provided to Ukraine. He was off by millions when he talked about how many migrants have crossed the border under Biden, and falsely claimed that some of Biden’s policies—like funding historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and reducing the price of insulin to $35 a month—were his own accomplishments.

There is no point in going on, because virtually everything he said was a lie. As Jake Lahut of the Daily Beast recorded, he also was all over the map. “On January 6,” Trump said, “we had a great border.” To explain how he would combat opioid addiction, he veered off into talking points about immigration and said his administration “bought the best dog.” He boasted about acing a cognitive test and that he had just recently won two golf club tournaments without mentioning that they were at his own golf courses. “To do that, you have to be quite smart and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way,” he said. “I can do it.”

As Lahut recorded, Trump said this: “Clean water and air. We had it. We had the H2O best numbers ever, and we were using all forms of energy during my 4 years. Best environmental numbers ever, they gave me the statistic [sic.] before I walked on stage actually.”

Trump also directly accused Biden of his own failings and claimed Biden’s own strengths, saying, for example, that Biden, who has enacted the most sweeping legislation of any president since at least Lyndon Johnson, couldn’t get anything done while he, who accomplished only tax cuts, was more effective. He responded to the calling out of his own criminal convictions by saying that Biden “could be a convicted felon,” and falsely stating: “This man is a criminal.” And, repeatedly, Trump called America a “failing nation” and described it as a hellscape.

It went on and on, and that was the point. This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.

It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective.

There are ways to combat the Gish gallop—by calling it out for what it is, among other ways—but Biden retreated to trying to give the three pieces of evidence that established his own credentials on the point at hand. His command of those points was notable, but the difference between how he sounded at the debate and how he sounded on stage at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, just an hour afterward suggested that the technique worked on him.

That’s not ideal, but as Monique Pressley put it, “The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully. Not a debate performance against a pathological lying sociopath.”

A much bigger deal is what it says that the television media and pundits so completely bought into Trump’s performance. They appear to have accepted Trump’s framing of the event—that he is dominant—so fully that the fact Trump unleashed a flood of lies and non-sequiturs simply didn’t register. And, since the format established that the CNN journalists running the debate did not challenge anything either candidate said, and Dale’s fact-checking spot came long after the debate ended, the takeaway of the event was a focus on Biden’s age rather than on Trump’s inability to tell the truth or form a coherent thought.

At the end of the evening, pundits were calling not for Trump—a man liable for sexual assault and business fraud, convicted of 34 felonies, under three other indictments, who lied pathologically—to step down, but for Biden to step down…because he looked and sounded old. At 81, Biden is indeed old, but that does not distinguish him much from Trump, who is 78 and whose inability to answer a question should raise concerns about his mental acuity.

About the effect of tonight’s events, former Republican operative Stuart Stevens warned: “Don't day trade politics. It's a sucker's game. A guy from Queens out on bail bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade, said in public he didn't have sex with a porn star, defended tax cuts for billionaires, defended Jan. 6th. and called America the worst country in the world. That guy isn't going to win this race.”

Trump will clearly have pleased his base tonight, but Stevens is right to urge people to take a longer view. It’s not clear whether Trump or Biden picked up or lost votes; different polls gave the win to each, and it’s far too early to know how that will shake out over time.

Of far more lasting importance than this one night is the clear evidence that stage performance has trumped substance in political coverage in our era. Nine years after Trump launched his first campaign, the media continues to let him call the shots."

 

[shyvas]

Heather Cox Richardson had an interesting piece on it.

Can you post the link please, KL?