Harris Vs Trump 2024 US Presidential election - read the warning in the OP posted 18/09/24

I absolutely dont think Trump has the minerals especially after watching him debase himself in front on Putin in Finland when he was President.

Turns out they were right in a sense, given that Bush actually lost the 2000 election according to the votes (Climate Town, Youtube), won 2004 only with the benefit of an ill gotten incumbency, and Trump didn't win by popular vote but eked out an electoral college win in 2016.

I similarly also see the only way Trump can win in 2024 is either by an electoral college win without the popular vote or similar supreme court interference.

(As I stated previously when I shared the video earlier in the thread iirc, it's interesting that Roger Stone (not imaged below but part of the efforts), Matt Schlapp and other MAGA lieutenants were also part of the election steal in 2000, as evidenced in the video such as eg. at the Brooks Brothers Riot, which was wholesale an astroturf riot made up largely of Republican operatives)

In the same sentence… "candidate has the minerals" (whatever that nonsense means) and "critical thinking is becoming less and less common". Yeah you summed it up there alright.

Trump effectively surrendered to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

John Bolton and H.R. McMaster, two former Trump national security advisers known for their hawkish views, have lambasted both Trump and Biden for the withdrawal — though both have long been critical of the Taliban agreement.

• "Our secretary of state [Mike Pompeo] signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban," McMaster said on Bari Weiss' podcast. "This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves."

https://www.axios.com/2021/08/20/trump-taliban-agreement-doha-biden

Being friends with Don Junior does not look great, is he also on the Bolivian marching powder, does Junior handle his product endorsements/sales, does he hold DJT shares…………

By the way Vance snuck this lie in there that we didn't mention last night: he claimed Trump "salvaged" Obamacare aka. The Affordable Care Act.

… Sen. John McCain, what do you make of that analysis:

Survey says false,

In fact that's a GIF of John McCain casting the most pivotal vote of his life to "salvage" Obamacare himself, on July 27, 2017 something that Trump never forgave him for, and still holds a grudge against John McCain to this day*, and well past the life of McCain himself.

*Former President Donald Trump criticized late Sen. John McCain for standing in the way of Republicans' efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, known colloquially as Obamacare, while he was still in office during a two-hour speech in Newton, Iowa.

Wikipedia notes it was the 6th attempt under Trump to dismantle Obamacare, in just the first 5 months of his Presidency, and roughly the 70th overall attempt by the GOP to dismantle or whittle down the ACA by that point - and there were still 3 additional attempts by Trump and the GOP to destroy it after that. Two of those efforts were in their part successful, one was an executive order and one was a rider on the 2017 Trump tax cut:

On October 12, 2017, President Donald Trump ended by executive order government subsidies paid to health insurance companies to help pay out-of-pocket costs for low-income people.[58] The Congressional Budget Office estimated that by 2018 this would result in an approximately 20 percent increase in individual insurance premiums[59] as well as result in fewer people being insured.[59]

On November 2, 2017, a bill later known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was introduced by Representative Kevin Brady of Texas. Included in the bill was the move to change the tax penalty for not having health insurance mandated by the Affordable Care Act to zero.[60] [61] Economists said this would lower interest in obtaining health insurance coverage.[62] The bill was signed into law on December 22, 2017 by Donald Trump,[63] with the loss of individual mandate taxation being set to take effect January 1, 2019.[60]

It's not clear who Vance was trying to lie to with that porker last night, but it was sure not to convince anyone of voting age of anything, all of whom are old enough to remember how much Trump and the GOP tried to destroy the Affordable Care Act.

The idea that he "salvaged" Obamacare is complete nonsense.

"the Democrats have literally thrown the kitchen sink at him"

No.

No they haven't.

Well, he got 74 million votes in the 2020 presidential election. That's 74 million people who saw how Trump acted in his four years in office with the rambling diatribes, fighting with his cabinet members and other appointed officials, undermining democracy by suggesting on no evidence that the election must be rigged should he lose, and just his general lack of leadership throughout the COVID pandemic and any other example you want to give of 'bad character' (to put it mildly) while in office and still voted for him.

Now, there are two possibilities of how you can categorise these people, as I see it:- one is that this 74 million people are the base, in which case that could be enough. Second one is that this may include swing voters, but if they were prepared to vote for Trump after seeing how he behaved in his presidency, I don't see why they wouldn't plump for him again, especially when he has the challenger advantage of being able to say, "Yeah, everything that's wrong here, I can fix", without having to back it up in real time.

Either way, I reckon that between 70-74 million will be the bar that Harris needs to clear, and in the right areas. Getting two million more votes than needed in California isn't going to do her any good.

Have some of Trump's voters died off? Yes, but so have some of Harris's, and one thing the Trump campaign has been doing is targeting the young male demographic. Trump has been doing at least a few podcasts that appeal to this cohort recently, and he might even show up on Rogan yet, as well, so they know that they have to keep their numbers topped up. I think their reckoning is that angry young men will show up to the polls. Taylor Swift fans, not so much.

The thing about Trump's 70-74m is that while yes, the vast majority saw Trump's Presidency and have no issue with him being President again, the impact of Jan 6th, the overturning of Roe V Wade and the criminal charges against him will have chipped away somewhat at his voters, while he really hasn't done anything to gain new voters to any large degree or enough to offset those he's likely to have lost.

Many people in 2020 voted for Biden not because they were particularly enthused or excited to vote for him, but because he wasn't Trump. With Harris now as the candidate, it's hard to see where the Dems would have lost votes to the same degree that Trump has, and Harris, while not particularly exciting as a candidate either, is still probably more appealing to many people than either Trump or Biden would have been had he still decided to run.

I don't think Trump doing the likes of Rogan or Theo Von's podcasts will move the needle in any real way for him. I'd say a sizeable chunk of both those audiences would already align with Trump. While Taylor Swift's fanbase may not also be a huge voting block by themselves, they would be a core part of what could really swing the election; people who oppose the overturning of Roe V Wade. That will really be one of the core issues for the election and particularly getting people to vote who may not ordinarily vote.

..

Benenson Strategey Group? Not greatly rated tbh.

And given what the Rasmussen scandal is revealing about polling I'd still be skeptical of any of the polling really.

Okay. Nobody is claiming the election isn't close though, both in terms of polling and betting odds. People may be arguing that the polls/odds shouldn't be close, but there's no denying they are close regardless. The issue with betting odds is that they're only determined by who people are placing bets on, and when odds are particularly close to the point where the payout is minimal people are more likely to place bets on the longer odds because there's a better payout.

The odds will fluctuate back and forth until the election, but they provide very little relevant information regarding possible voting trends. A Harris supporter might still place a bet on Trump if the odds are right, because even if Harris lost they'd get a better payout than if they'd bet on Harris and she won.

If Trump's odds had gone from 8/1 to 1/1 overnight, then you might have a point. But with how close the odds have been between them for the past few weeks, unless something drastic happens (and the VP Debate produced nothing drastic), the betting odds between today, yesterday and tomorrow are currently showing nothing of value.

She's a terrrible candidate and 100% is going to lose to Trump. She'll win the popular vote but he'll demolish her in the electoral college.

He has these damning indictments against his character, as you mention - I agree. Has he (or his campaign, rather) done anything to attract new voters? This could warrant some study because do we know what lengths his team have gone to in order to suck people into the MAGA vortex or even just become MAGA-adjacent?

But that's just a side-question, really, because the reality is that the polls are neck and neck. So whether it's that Trump is winning voters or that Harris is losing some, or whatever it might be, this is how things stand.

Is it possible that there are also a lot of angry young women out there who aren't necessarily going to answer polls but who want to rip Trump a new one for, well, not even his stance on abortion because I don't believe Trump has any real political principles, but certainly his constant enabling of pro-lifers? It is absolutely possible, yes, but it obviously cannot be assumed , because assumptions are dangerous things.

@everlast75

Trump also lost by 7 million votes.
Where exactly is he going to pick those up?

Who has he won over with his conduct from 2020-2024?
How has he broadened his base?

Nevermind new voters - has he retained all those who voted for him in 2020?

I'm not sure his campaign has any real plans to really top that number. It's really all about having more votes than the other person. Can Harris get Biden's number of 2020? I would be surprised. Not unhappy, certainly, but surprised, yes.

And even then the other thing is that Biden didn't really win 2020 by seven million votes because the popular vote doesn't decide their elections. He won by some slim margins in a few key states. That's really all Trump's team want to reverse, or need to reverse, and that is indeed achievable, especially when the RNC chair announced the hiring of MAGA workers to act as poll watchers in those states for November.

super! Re-mortgage your house, nip down to Paddy Power and stick it all on Trump. You'll be quids in, five weeks from now!