US Presidential Election 2024 - Primary Debates, News, Etc.

ghostfacekilla · 06-12-2023 6:14pm

https://youtu.be/NOG3eus4ZSo?si=wECtbGuF3jsIxk9V

Tonight, Tonight!

Real Donald Trump · 06-12-2023 11:29pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121440645#Comment_121440645

Gavin should focus on cleaning up his craphole state.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUwlSrFRqi4

eightieschewbaccy · 12-12-2023 6:16am

Some of the candidates really taking the piss now. There's going with the flow of the contest etc but... *Gets coat *

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/11/vivek-ramaswamy-urinating-twitter-x-elon-musk-alex-jones

Agent Coulson · 28-12-2023 10:33pm

MTG, Brandon Williams & Rick Scott all got SWATTED by police over Christmas

That’s some serious **** going on in gun happy America.

What happened to knock and run.

briany · 29-12-2023 10:56pm

"What was the cause of the civil war?"

"Uh...."

maik3n · 30-12-2023 5:44pm

I'm actually quite surprised that there's hasn't been much more support for Haley, with the recent Civil War debacle.

Considering all the crowing about CRT the past few years, along with the book banning and rewriting of history (such as DeSantis and his ''Slavery Was a Good Thing” Curriculum) you would imagine that those on the right, would be quick off the mark to defend her and agree that it is/was all about STATES RIGHTS.

Has the tide finally turned perhaps on this issue or is it more that Haley is just such a ''meh'' candidate that even those on her side of the aisle are not bothered.

astrofool · 30-12-2023 6:07pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121550753#Comment_121550753

The GOP will be scrambling around looking for anyone half-presentable if they can eliminate trump somehow (while pretending they don't want to eliminate him).

briany · 31-12-2023 5:27pm

Just to remind ourselves of how horrendous slavery was in the United States, and indeed everywhere that it was or is practiced, it included beating, imprisonment, torture, shackling, rape, forced breeding, withholding of education and of payment, and just a generally focused and cruel consistent denial of all the human rights which we today take nearly for granted in our privileged part of the world.

So, when Nikki Haley hesitates for even a moment to talk about the reason why the Civil War started (where the reason was explicitly stated by several seceding states), it shows something brewing in the dark heart of the new American right. Not because it doesn't want to express it, but because it is biding its time.

Critical Race Theory has been adopted by the new American right as basically any talk about how racism and racist conduct is bad, and is setting the stage for a major backslide in attitudes.

pixelburp · 31-12-2023 5:57pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121554540#Comment_121554540

Just to remind ourselves of how horrendous slavery was in the United States, and indeed everywhere that it was or is practiced, it included beating, imprisonment, torture, shackling, rape, forced breeding, withholding of education and of payment, and just a generally focused and cruel consistent denial of all the human rights which we today take nearly for granted in our privileged part of the world.

It's also worth noting that the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in 1807, yet America continued to not only to trade in slavery - the number of enslaved people grew over the decades leading to the Civil War. A war that started 50+ years later. It was a literal industry that effectively bolstered and grew the internal American economy, especially in the Southern States. As you note, Slaves were often forcibly "bred" with each other to create a constant new generation of workers.

While tangentially, modern advances like our understanding of gynecology came from experiments on slaves without their consent. The country's status is seeped in the blood of the slaves who built and worked everything. A few probably did well, the Uncle Tom's or lucky few treated like treasure pets - the rest died at industrial numbers.

They weren't the only country to continue to keep slaves but while the rest of the Western World shuttered the trade out of vague humanitarian concerns - this was the 19th century after all, Africa hardly gained much from the abolition - but America uniquely prospered and grew off the back of something theoretically ended everywhere else.

Maybe it's no wonder white (southern) America doesn't want to consider reparations or examinations cos I daresay much of the country's "old money" has slaving in its tree.

Manic Moran · 03-01-2024 2:13pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121554540#Comment_121554540

What I don't get is why people think it must be a clear either/or answer with no crossover. The actual answer is both.

It was about the rights of the individual states which especially in the ante-bellum period were much stronger than they are now and was the default. The US was not one single entity, they even had to change the US Army Oath of Commissioning half-way through the war to change from allegiance to the US (plural) to the Constitution (singular). The particular subset of rights which started the war was the right to have slavery, which amongst other things the South felt was its own business, not that of the North or the Federal Government. If not slavery, it could have been something else eventually, though slavery was the proximate casus belli. So saying "slavery" isn't inherently wrong. If the South didn't insist on keeping it, there wouldn't have been a war in 1861. But neither is "state rights" an incorrect answer, even today, various states are chafing under different problems relative to others. For example, exactly half the states filed brief in the 9th circuit last week opposing twenty other states (and DC) in the case. Fortunately we're not coming to blows yet, but obviously the states aren't happy now, and they really weren't happy in 1861 when things like the Federal Government taxing a fifth of people's income and passing laws affecting what they did wasn't a normal thing.

People expecting a simple one word (slavery) or two word (state rights) answer are willing to overlook a lot of the context which is why answering the supposedly simple 'gotcha' question isn't as simple as some might want.

pixelburp · 03-01-2024 2:49pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121565576#Comment_121565576

Wait now, let's not lose sight of context in the controversy either. She wasn't asked from the context of some dry academic symposium debating the issue - she was asked a direct & intentionally political question about an issue the GOP has, quite vocally and by its own collective action, tried to either downplay or rewrite entirely. Whether it's whatabaout the slaves who had it good, trying to sabotage Critical Race Theory as an attempt to interrogate the complexities of that period, or just the ongoing suppression of reparation payments, it's important not to ignore the realpolitik of why she was being asked in the first place . "State's Rights" is a relevant part of a broader and more broadly accurate answer to "what was the Civil War about?", but it was not for one second the reason why she was grilled on it.

It's entirely possible she was genuinely trying to give that dry, academic and technically true answer: but either she made a balls of that or she was singing from the hym sheet of the latter-day attempts to downplay the reality Race had in the Civil War. The difference between "History" as something abstract and macro level (it was all about State's Rights), or something pragmatic with a net impact on the people who lived those times (it was about Slavery). Which one, ultimately, is more important to Americans living now in 2024?

Not for nothing the general teaching of history has been trying to move away from those dry, impersonal stories of legislation and treaties - or indeed the fallacy of the Great Man - and towards "people's histories" and what life back then meant for those within it.

Manic Moran · 03-01-2024 3:55pm

I agree that the question wasn't asked out of academic rigour. But the fact is that the question itself was posed because it's a currently politicised topic inherently means that politics is trumping history. To a lot of people, there is only one currently acceptable answer to the question (as there is to a number of other politicsed topics, be it Israel or the history of gun control), and that answer is predicated upon political leanings as opposed to the actual historical reality in context. This is why I called it a 'gotcha'. At face value, the actual answer is an unacceptable answer to most everyone. Something similar resulted from the hearing of the university presidents recently. https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/11/business/university-leaders-testimony-nightcap/index.html “Over prepared and over lawyered given the hostile forum and high stakes, she provided a legalistic answer to a moral question, and that was wrong."

You can certainly make the argument that any politician, particularly a Republican, can expect to face the question in some form at some time and be ready for it, and that in this she demonstrated failure, but equally it's understandable that someone is going to take a moment and be very careful answering a question which has 'one real' and 'two acceptable' answers, none of the three of which are the same.

briany · 03-01-2024 4:39pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121565576#Comment_121565576

It was about states' rights to practice slavery.

My concern about Haley's initial reticence to include slavery in her answer is that it points to either a backsliding in attitudes among GOP voters to whom Haley is beholden, or a rising of an attitude already deeply held into the light of day.

Slavery should be the easy, out-front part of the answer, before getting into a longer-winded one about economic tensions and so on.

"States' rights" is unfortunately also a good vehicle to rewrite history to where the slavery issue can be diminished and diminished until it's a footnote, and that's dangerous. That's setting the stage for something very dark. I would class that as one prong of the pincer movement that has Republican voters talking about 'critical race theory' being taught in schools, which they seem to classify as any talk about racism is bad and/or how black people had been enslaved and that this was a historical wrong.

ELM327 · 03-01-2024 4:42pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121550835#Comment_121550835

Considering it's still 60:40 Trump vs rest of GOP combined with no other candidate in double digits I don't think that's likely to happen.

It's a Trump Biden ballot, that's for sure.

Manic Moran · 03-01-2024 5:07pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121566456#Comment_121566456

I entirely agree with this statement. "It was about states' rights to practice slavery".

Now, though short, simple and accurate, how is that going to go over in the political environment?

Gussoe · 03-01-2024 5:11pm

Couldn't she have just said that it was about the South trying to secede to form their own country in order to keep Slavery, and the United States stopped it.

pixelburp · 03-01-2024 5:17pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121566233#Comment_121566233

But the fact is that the question itself was posed because it's a currently politicised topic inherently means that politics is trumping history. To a lot of people, there is only one currently acceptable answer to the question (as there is to a number of other politicsed topics, be it Israel or the history of gun control), and that answer is predicated upon political leanings as opposed to the actual historical reality in context

I think that's trying to sidestep the micro-level of the era for that aforementioned macro, abstracted angle that it was all just treaties and paperwork; it doesn't matter whether "state's rights" is some important & proper answer because fundamentally the question is neither complicated or political, despite claiming otherwise. America has a slaving past, with the Civil War an explosive culmination of that - no matter how much the attempt is made to fudge the prominence of that aspect - and any attempt at retrospection or elaboration on that history has met with extreme resistance from only one side of the chambers - Haley's.

Her answer wasn't some attempt to correct a balance, nor did I think she was trying to affect education of her audience either. The problem isn't How did the Civil War start? being answered without technical precision, the problem is Why can't some parts of America accept Slavery was a stain - the Civil War question becoming a neat reduction and shortcut to get to that point. The answer is the problem here, not the question.

Absolutely nothing is lost in ignoring "state's rights [to own slaves]" as some true explanation for the war - the same can't said in shelving "it was slavery" as the answer. Only one of those has the side-effect of dehumanising and ignoring those who had most to lose & gain.

You're right, it's politicised - but it really, really shouldn't be.

briany · 03-01-2024 5:18pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121566620#Comment_121566620

If it isn't accepted, that's really more of a problem with the political environment than the statement itself. But people like Haley are only turning off moderate voters by displaying their lack of backbone via a reticence to say the second part.

AbusesToilets · 03-01-2024 5:20pm

That's not a politicized statement, except for those who want to downplay the history and legacy of slavery. Thankfully folks who hold those opinions can be generally be ignored.

briany · 03-01-2024 5:39pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121566692#Comment_121566692

Well, no, they can't be ignored. Ignoring only works if they're a small minority, but the "It was about states' rights..." thing has been gaining a foothold in the GOP base. They're not completing the sentence unless pressed to do so. I propose that this historical revisionism will only lead to bad places, socially. I will sum it up in the following,

"Wut de fúck arr yew complainin' about now, n****r? Ain't our fault you live in a ghetto. Dat slavery myth is jest some woke-a$$ bullshit. So, get shinin' 'em shoes, boy."

pixelburp · 03-01-2024 5:50pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121566692#Comment_121566692

The problem is, the "State's Rights" GOP members are those actively trying to block everything from reparations debates, to Confederate statues to Critical Race Theory (that one a particular source of fury among the Fox adjacent chattering classes).

They can't be ignored because they're in power and actively trying to rewrite history through obfuscation and dissembling.

AbusesToilets · 03-01-2024 5:58pm

Ignored in the sense they're philosophically unsalvageable. The Democrats, and anyone who actually cares about democracy, need to be far more active in working to block and undo their machinations. Christian fundamentalism, whose members tend to share space in the same circle, are the biggest threat to the US.

political analyst · 03-01-2024 7:32pm

I've heard it said that it's unconstitutional to prevent Trump from running for a second term in the White House but the Constitution will be torn to shreds if he does run and is elected. He admitted that he'll be a dictator if he is re-elected.

ancapailldorcha · 03-01-2024 7:34pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121567253#Comment_121567253

That's a pitiful argument. Who said it's unconstitutional?

political analyst · 03-01-2024 7:36pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121567261#Comment_121567261

I meant that, presumably, that's what those people who either support Trump or at least have reservations about the removal of Trump's name from the ballot at state level think. Read between the lines!