USA 2024 presidential election

magicbastarder

because there's two senators per state no matter the population size.

the population of california is about 70 times the population of wyoming, but they both have two senators. which means your vote in senate elections has a hell of a lot more sway in wyoming than in california.

AFAIK it's one of the reasons the american political system is more conservative than the electorate; the small states tend to be rural and conservative, but have representation in the senate equal to much larger, more liberal states.

Rjd2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120518623#Comment_120518623

Both Biden and Trump are unpopular but the difference is the moderates/independents loath Trumpism and will vote for Biden. We seen numerous examples in 2022 where all the MAGA candidates flopped.

I seen a poll the other day where voters in 201 who disliked both Trump and Clinton in the end went with Trump. in the same demo Biden has a massive advantage something like 40% ,that's ball game.

Biden and Trump are both way to old to be president and I doubt either would last a full term, but don't forget Trump looks awful these days, some of those videos he has put attacked De Santis , the absolute state of him. I suppose though its to be expected he is near 80 , overweight and has a dreadful diet.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120518772#Comment_120518772

Ah I didn't mean corrupt. Just that money and incumbency distorts everything.

Sam Russell

Well, the reason the US Senate has two Senators is the same reason The EU member states have one Commissioner each - to defend the rights of smaller states against the bigger ones.

AbusesToilets

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120519408#Comment_120519408

More so to defend the slave owning Southern states from the influence of the more populous Northern ones. The US Senate is an anachronism and wildly unrepresentative. It should be abolished truthfully and the House expanded to more effectively represent the population trends.

magicbastarder

the US/EU comparison only goes so far, as the US is a single country, albeit more federated than most.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120519957#Comment_120519957

Well, that may be true about slave owning, but that is a long time passing.

However, the Senate generally deals with foreign affairs, while the House deals with taxation and both houses have to agree on legislation.

odyssey06

Is Harris pretty much locked in as VP on the Democratic ticket or is there possibility of a different pick?

Even considering the constraints of the office, she doesn't seem to have made a positive impression.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523318#Comment_120523318

I think that Biden could select a different one, but I do not know.

I think the Joe Kennedy III would be an interesting possibility. Former congressman and grandson of Robert Kennedy, brother of JFK. Would he be an asset to the Dems?

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523318#Comment_120523318

i don't think she's made much of an impression at all, positive or negative?

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523471#Comment_120523471

I hate to say it, but the likelihood of Biden replacing a black woman with a white man as VP are probably around zero. We know how much the Dems and broadly Left Leaning in America will tear each other apart over Purity Tests - Harris getting the boot would be a huge self-inflicted wound, not unless Biden replaced Harris with someone more popular like Stacey Abrams. Harris has been a bit of a non-entity, but then what VP hasn't been?

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523573#Comment_120523573

At this stage she could do with a Dan Quayle type gaffe just for some publicity...

This BBC article, albeit a year old, suggests troubles:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60061473

This recent poll suggest her support is solid with base, but unfavourable view countrywide:

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/new-poll-finds-stagnant-biden-job-rating-low-harris-approval-rcna75928

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523576#Comment_120523576

Does the Kennedy name carry any weight or is that magic gone for good?

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523603#Comment_120523603

Couldn't say for sure but one would imagine that given the way US demographics are shifting, the lure of a Kennedy no longer carries the kind of water it used to. The rising stars of the Democrats are PoC, women, or both; WASP, Irish Americans appear to be a thinning cohort compared with yesteryear and may not have much value anymore. There's a not entirely crazy argument that Biden might be the last, properly Irish-centric President we see for decades because of this demographic shift.

Rjd2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523576#Comment_120523576

Harris's approval numbers are dismal. She won't be replaced because the optics would be abysmal and their isn't anyone obvious they could replace her with anyway. Abrams as a political figure for now is done, she got beaten pretty easily by Kemp in 2022.

I don't think it matters anyway, nobody when they vote in 2024 will care about Harris, its going to be a vote on Trump as it was in 2022.

You want Trump, vote Trump, you don't vote Biden.

eire4

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120240496#Comment_120240496

Hard to see him having the ability to be successful on a national stage rather then just at the state level. Having said that I am sure the Democrats would love to run against him and have him as the Republican nominee with the amount of wild things and sheer hate that he constantly spews forth.

eire4

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120518781#Comment_120518781

I would say the heavily gerrymandered states like say North Carolina would be vastly more undemocratic.

AbusesToilets

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561344#Comment_120561344

NC is a disgrace right now. The Republican state assembly is so shameless in their corruption, it would put a banana republic to shame.

eire4

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561799#Comment_120561799

And it was recently backed up by their so called state supreme court who said their gerrymandered district maps were just fine.

Rjd2

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/07/president-biden-post-abc-poll/

I think Biden is fav for 2024 and their is issues with the sampling size but its clear Biden despite what MSNBC and his online influencers say is not a popular president.

Amusingly the GOP seem intent in running the one man he can beat though.

AbusesToilets

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120564396#Comment_120564396

Latest bit involves a Democrat switching parties after campaigning on a pro choice platform, giving the Republicans a veto proof supermajority. She just happened to be **** the Rep leader also. Another state falls to the Christian nationalists.

Abortion ban brought in using a typically shady practice.

eire4

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120568611#Comment_120568611

At this point the Republican party is not even pretending to be a political party that believes in the democratic process. The US system in general is broken and dysfunctional. But I would say in general a big part of that is because the Republican party is purely about obtaining and maintaining power by any means no matter how corrupt and anti democratic they are.

Rjd2

Tim Scott is in.

Not a massive surprise and Trump seems happy. He knows Scott has zero chance and the field more crowded the better for him.

I suspect like Haley it will be very mild criticism of Trump but gloves of with RDS. Tim will have an eye on been Trump's VP.

Amusingly in this primary only Christie looks like he will go all out on Trump.

https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/1660666963339640832

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523612#Comment_120523612

Agreed. Both parties are shifting further away from the center, towards the extreme elements of their party's respective views. It's been mentioned a lot here about the republicans and their issues, some of which is more founded than others, but for the democrats its the same. The next candidate for the democrats will probably be a trans woman of color who is LGB as well as T, to appeal to all the minorities. And for the republicans probably Trump again.

Extremism is like a pendulum, its starting now to swing back to the center from the extreme left (Dylan Mulvaney) after having been at the extreme right (Trump presidency) for some time.

Brussels Sprout

So DeSantis is launching his campaign on Twitter today with Elon Musk.

Interesting move by Musk. Trump was probably going to return to the platform at some stage but I don't think he will now.

DeSantis's campaign looks doomed already. The guy is a personality vacuum whose one trick is shouting about how Florida is taking the fight to "wokeness" from a podium. Put him in a room with regular voters doing meet & greets and it's as bad as any wooden politician I can remember (including Gordan Brown campaigning in 2010). So yeah not sure why Musk is hitching himself to that train wreck. Just another bad business decision by him in a long string of them since he decided to buy Twitter.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120634493#Comment_120634493

I said it in the Trump thread, but Musk talking to DeSantis will only convince more that the former leans more (conspiratorially inflected ) right-wing than he might insist. It's one thing to engage in "all sides" out of some pie-in-the-sky idea of Free Speech, but quite another to talk to someone like DeSantis.

Have seen a few snippets of DeSantis' media performance and he's really gonna have to up his game to withstand the avalanche of aggressive nonsense Trump will throw at him; Trump will go in teeth-baring at the first debate between the two and I really can't see DeSantis having anything resembling the nous or smarts to counter the shotgun of bullshít coming his way.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120634614#Comment_120634614

He doesn't have the nimbleness. He's basically a robot. it'll be like that time that Chris Christie pointed out that Marco Rubio kept using the same few canned responses and effectively killed his 2016 campaign there and then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkdpzRDxTXU&ab_channel=CBSNews

Rjd2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120634809#Comment_120634809

I agree to an extent, he was poor in the debate with Crist , but I think he did ok against Gillum? He clearly has some political nous to have the career that he has had and only 44. Will he beat Trump? I don't see the path to beating someone who has a vice like grip of 40% of the base and with such a crowded field but heh been wrong before.

Amusingly it looks like Christie is going to be the only person who will go all out on Trump on the debate stage btw.

eire4

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120518853#Comment_120518853

Absolutely correct analysis there of why the senate is so undemocratic and the problem it causes by its very nature causing the US senate to be much more conservative then is the overall all US population. It thus also makes it easier for a conservative minority to impose their views on the country and or block things they do not like even if a majority want them.

eire4

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120521041#Comment_120521041

That is key though no legislation can become law without passing the senate and while protecting smaller states from getting steam rolled by bigger states has some merit to it the senate IMHO has gone way too far the other way and now basically allows a minority to impose their conservatism on the US population as a whole very often or at the very least block legislation they do not like thus lurching the US further to the right then they actually are as a population.