2024 US Presidential Election

The 2024 US Presidential Election is already underway. These are the declared Republican candidates so far:

• Donald Trump. The elephant in the room. Mr. Narcissist. Never met a lie he couldn't tell.
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• Ron DeSantis. Feels like the Darth Vader of the pack. No one crueler.
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• Chris Christie. One of two Republicans talking honest sense. He'll take some great jabs at Trump, but he hasn't got a chance.
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• Asa Huthinson. The other Republican talking honest sense. No chance.
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• Nikki Haley. She used to be a nice person, but then she learned to play politics.
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• Mike Pence. I think he held elected office once.
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• Tim Scott. Mr. Happy Boy. Ignorance is bliss.
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• Ryn Binkley. Has a nice ring to it: "President Binkley."
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• Doug Burgum. Who?
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• Larry Elder. Again, who?
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• Will Hurd. Yet again, who?
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• Perry Johnson. Where are they finding these guys?
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• Vivek Ramaswamy. Killed the most trees so far, we're getting tons of his mailings.
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• Francis Suarez. Mayor of Miami.

With the exception of Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, no Republican candidate dares criticize Trump because they know he'll come after them and that will kill their chances to pick up votes from Trump supporters. How do you win a race against someone you won't actually campaign against?I expected that by now Chris Christie would be regularly making the news with pithy verbal takedowns of Trump, but either I'm reading the wrong news or he's been silent. He's even been to my own state of New Hampshire, but I didn't hear a peep about him.Right now I can't see a Republican path to victory in 2024. Unless Trump drowns in his legal troubles he's got the Republican nomination locked up, but with all his legal baggage there seems no path to victory for him in the general election.I can't see how Trump could fail to win the nomination as long as he has the support of most Republican politicians, but if he didn't then who could win? DeSantis seems a bit of a very hatable Nixonian figure, and I don't give him a chance. Pence hasn't gotten even a bit of traction so far, and I don't see that changing. Nikki Halley might be electable if when speaking at the national level she stops reciting the scary hateful parts of her platform. Happy Boy Tim Scott might have a chance.If the Republican party does finally turn on Donald Trump (which seems impossible), then Chris Christie's the guy. He's smart, he's informed, he's entertaining, he's quotable, and he knows how to lead.These are the declared Democratic candidates:

• Joe Biden. A sitting president is almost never denied the nomination. Even weakened and beseiged by the Iranian hostage crisis and high inflation, Jimmy Carter tidily beat Ted Kennedy in the primaries. Joe Biden will be the Democratic nomineee.
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• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Sounds familiar. I think I supported him in 1968.
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• Marianne Williamson. Not a chance.

2024 will come down to a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and given all his baggage Donald Trump doesn't have even a puncher's chance.But the Republicans must see this, too, and just as in 2016 we're imagining conversations in Republican back rooms about how to prevent a Trump candidacy. But they couldn't prevent it in 2016, and I don't think they can prevent it now. They're doomed.--Percy

You haven't said anything meaningful. What have French riots over an egregious police murder to do with Social Democracy in France?There was a time maybe a year or so ago when you seemed to realize you weren't making sense and actually suspended participation for a while. Your attitude then seemed to be, "I realize I'm not making sense, so I'm not going to say anything for a little while."Your attitude now seems to be, "I'm going to ignore the fact that I'm not making sense, in fact will insist that I am to making sense and plunge ahead anyway." You seem incapable of putting together any chain of inductive/deductive logic.--Percy

Yes, work on it, though I don't think EvC is part of the problem. But diabetes is serious. It's your life. Get that A1C down, way down, and keep it down. The lifestyle changes you have to make are definitely not fun, but I bet losing your toe wasn't fun, and future amputations, dialysis and blindness won't be fun, either.But I've seen throat cancer patients smoking through their neck stoma. If you want it then you gotta have it. That's just the way the human psyche works. Willpower is no match for craving.And please begin to recognize that there are people out there who can sell snow to eskimos. Look for facts that you can tie directly to reality. That's what you can trust. If you can't tie it directly to reality then until you can it's "I don't know" or at least "I'm not sure."--Percy

CNBC today ran an article about The Ten Worst States for Quality of Life. It rated all the states according to how good they were to live and work in, which included factors like crime, environmental quality, health care, childcare, discrimination, voting rights and reproductive rights. Here they are in ascending order from worst to least worst, and I include CNBC's point score. I also include who they voted for in 2020. I don't expect there are any surprises: I assume this makes the residents of these states proud because it proves how non-woke they are.If someone had asked me to guess which state was worst I would have said Louisiana. And I never would have guessed that Indiana was amongst the worst 10, beating out Florida by a good margin. And Florida should adopt a new motto: "Hey, at least we're not Texas."--Percy

In a column in today's Washington Post George Will predicted that neither Trump nor DeSantis will be the GOP nominee in 2024. I thought he would lean toward Tim Scott, but Scott doesn't even receive a mention (there's a disclosure at the bottom that Will's wife is an advisor to Scott). In fact, none of the other announced candidates are mentioned. My favorite lines:

George Will:

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Trump, as stale as a month-old crust of sourdough, is running to win the 2020 election.
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DeSantis is running hard to be president of Iowa...
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Vladimir Putin’s fifth column is not in Kyiv but in the Trump-DeSantis faction of the Republican Party.

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Putin has two hopes for a less than completely mortifying rescue from his Ukraine blunder. One is the election of Trump,...Putin’s other hope is the election of DeSantis,...

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Political prophesy is optional folly, but: There are not enough Republicans, in Iowa or the nation, enamored of the snarling contest between Trump and DeSantis — their competition to see who can despise the most American defects — to nominate either of them. Which is grim news for President Biden.

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Will's prediction surprises me. It's the support of Republicans that vote in primaries that Trump has to have, and he has that already. I think he has the GOP nomination already locked up.George Will believes that Biden's best chance for reelection is if the GOP nominee is Trump or DeSantis, but who he thinks the alternative might be he doesn't say, and I can't think of a single GOP candidate with the political heft to carry a national stage. It's going to be a Biden/Trump repeat in 2024. The primaries are just the country going through the motions.But I also agree with Will about political prophesy and folly.--Percy

Since the upcoming presidential campaign will likely see a lot of lies, this thread is probably a good place to post my complaint about the "miscaptioned" classification of debunking sites. Today there was this at Snopes: Did a Young Girl Hit Mike Pence in the Head with a Water Balloon? The answer is no, and they called the video miscaptioned.But if instead of a video there had been a brief article claiming that a young girl had hit Mike Pence in the head with a water balloon they would have classified it as "false" or "pants on fire" or whatever's equivalent in their classification system. They wouldn't have given it a milquetoast classification like "misstated" or "needs context."So why is a video "miscaptioned" when a short article would have been "false"? I posted a note to Snopes.--Percy

Would this be the consensus of comments of people you don't know? If you mean how SARS-CoV-2 originated, this is still not known with any certainty. There is no "long covid" mutation, just some variation among strains. Where are you getting this stuff? This if from the abstract for Comparison of Long COVID-19 Caused by Different SARS-CoV-2 Strains: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis:

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The findings of this study suggest that there is no significant difference between long COVID-19 that has been caused by different strains, except in certain general symptoms (i.e., in the Alpha or Omicron variant) and in sleep difficulty (i.e., the wild-type strain).

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Where did the idea of the suppression of truth come from? Certainly didn't come from the liberal side. No party, no group anywhere, has a monopoly on truth and honesty. But it is undeniably true that a large segment of the Republican party is hostage to a significant part of their base that is being fed lies that they swallow whole. The 2020 election was stolen. Fauci funded Chinese development of covid and engineered the virus's release. The head of the FBI, a conservative appointed by Trump, is biased against conservatives. The Biden's are a crime family. There's nothing gray here. When it comes to believing things that simply aren't true, the Republicans win running away. Someone has bought into someone else's propaganda again.Here in New Hampshire, Ramaswamy is definitely killing the most trees. His glossy flyers arrive constantly.--Percy

Today's NYT reports that Trump Plans to Expand Presidential Power Over Agencies in 2025 - The New York Times. They're "planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025..." It continues:

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Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

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A few of Trump's specific goals:

• Bring the FCC and the FTC under direct presidential control.
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• Resume fund impoundment, referring to when a president refuses to spend money allocated by Congress, a practice banned over a half century ago.
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• Remove employment protections from the civil service so that it can be "cleansed," and rout out from the State and Defense Departments all who are disloyal.

Trump claims that Article 2 says the president can do whatever he wants and that Congress has no right to give executive branch agencies any independence from the chief executive.At a recent campaign rally in Michigan Trump said:

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We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.

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Who exactly is the dictator actually referring to? Anyone he doesn't like.--Percy

What you originally said: Tanypteryx explained that nothing like that has ever happened in the history of the country, so you try again: Just like the Republican leadership could not deny Trump the nomination in 2016 after he'd won the primaries, the Democrat leadership cannot deny Biden the nomination if wins the primaries in 2024.And can you name a time in the entire history of the country when an elected president has been denied his party's nomination? Of course you can't, but it happened just once, in 1856, to Franklin Pierce. Do you really believe that something that hasn't happened in 168 years and only once in the entire history of the country is going to happen next year? Go out on limbs much?If Santayana were still with us he might say something like, "Those ignorant of history are doomed to spout nonsense." "he says" => "I say"--Percy

Yesterday Trump announced that he had received another target letter from the special counsel investigating the events leading up to and on January 6th, which includes all efforts at influencing the official count of the electoral college votes by the joint Congress. This means the insurrection, the attempts to influence state officials involved in vote counting, and the attempts to create slates of fake electors. This indicates that further indictments are possible. See Target Letter to Trump Suggests He Could Face Indictment in Jan. 6 Inquiry: Live Updates - The New York Times.--Percy

This is list of indictments and investigations of Donald Trump and taken from The latest on Donald Trump’s indictments and other key investigations in today's Washington Post:

1. Classified documents: Indicted for willful retention of national defense secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy.
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2. Business practices: Indicted for falsifying business records to disguise hush money payments to Stormy Daniels as legal expenses for business rather than campaign expenses.
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3. Attempt to steal 2020 presidential election. Under investigation for inciting a riot to hinder the counting of electoral votes, for influencing election officials at the state level to commit fraud, and for a conspiracy to create slates of state electors to cast doubt on the outcome of state elections and influence the counting of electoral votes.
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4. Georgia election interference: Under investigation for attempting to influence state officials to manipulate the vote count in Trump's favor.
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5. Business practices again: Sued by the State of New York for manipulating the valuations of properties in order to pay less taxes and receive cheaper loans and insurance policies.

That's a complete list so far, but it's worth mentioning that the Michigan attorney general has criminally charged 16 Republicans with creating a false slate of electors to challenge the outcome of the election in Michigan. The same may happen in Arizona. Republicans looking for election fraud need look no further than their own party.--Percy

Donald Trump was found guilty at trial of sexually abusing and defaming Jean Carroll back in May and is now seeking a new trial, arguing that the $5 million verdict was excessive, and that the finding of "sexual abuse" could be something as simple of groping a woman's breasts and so was minor.Now the judge in the case has released a filing clarifying that Trump had actually raped Carroll as rape is commonly understood. The New York state legal definition of rape is far narrower: forcible, unconsented-to penetration with one's penis. The judge explained that while the jury had not found that Trump had forcibly penetrated Carroll with his penis, they did find that he forcibly penetrated her with his finger, which is commonly understood as rape.This clarification will likely make Trump's efforts at seeking a new trial more difficult. Jean Carroll has another case pending against Trump that charges him with defamation while still president.See Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll.--Percy

Trump has a lot going on legally, but the threat runs in both directions. He alleges that all his legal problems are politically motivated and threatens America's trust in its system of justice. It will be hard to avoid eroding that trust because even if prosecutors raise the bar from "beyond a reasonable doubt" to "beyond any doubt", Trump supporters will still believe the charges were, uh, trumped up. --Percy

Really? Let's do that and see how well it works: Like what? Unless you can come up things Biden has going on legally, this makes no sense. Same thing. Unless you can come up things Biden has going on legally, this makes no sense. He has no legal problems about which to claim they're politically motivated. He hasn't been indicted at the state or federal level, he's not being investigated at the state or federal level, and he's not the object of any civil suits. Trump is all of these. In fact, Trump is the first president in the history of the country to ever be criminally indicted or even criminally investigated. Biden argues for an independent Justice Department that does not do the president's bidding, while during his administration Trump repeatedly berated William Sessions for not doing his bidding and finally replaced him with Bill Barr, who believes in a presidency with nearly unchecked and imperial powers, or at least he did until the lead up to and aftermath of January 6th when he hopefully realized that checks on presidential power are essential because even a psychopath can become president.And just last week Trump made a campaign announcement that if elected he wants to increase his power over the Justice Department. It was Congress that created the Justice Department after the Civil War, and after Nixon Congress developed additional laws, structures, and norms of law enforcement for the independence and neutrality for the Justice Department. But if Trump wins the election and Republicans control Congress at any time during his presidency then the independence of the Justice Department will likely disappear.In conclusion, there is no similarity whatsoever between the two men on the nature of the independence of the Justice Department. Unless you can find some indictments where Biden must be concerned about the strength of the evidence, this makes no sense in a Biden context.That Trump supporters want to defend Trump is fine, but they must recognize the difficulty of the task before them. They should seek real evidence to support the things they say and not take refuge in false equivalencies between baseless assertions and fact-based positions, because there are real facts out there.And definitely they shouldn't say silly things like (in effect), "Anything you say about Trump's legal difficulties are equally true of Biden." That's just daft.--Percy

Any Ken Starr findings could only have ended in impeachment before Congress, not a trial before a judge, and so his investigation was considered political, just as were the Trump impeachments. Clinton *was* impeached, for lying under oath and obstruction of justice. The Senate demurred from convicting him. Later when leaving office Clinton agreed to a plea deal where he pled guilty to contempt of court, a misdemeanor, for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. He lost his license to practice law in Arkansas for five years.The background for this is that he had stated under oath in court that "there's nothing going on between us" and contended that it was true at the time. The judge didn't buy it, and I'm happy she didn't because I've always believed that if you purposefully say something that creates an impression in people's mind other than the truth, and you're aware that you're creating that misimpression, then that is a lie, no matter how true in a technical sense what you said was.I was not a Clinton fan, but despite that Ken Starr came across to me as absurdly relentless. His investigation spanned across four years. If you look that hard and find as little as he did you have to conclude that nothing significant happened, or least that there was just too little evidence left behind to prove anything happened.--Percy